She couldn’t stop reflecting on a novel she had read, years ago, called Thérèse Raquin, because it reminded her so much of her current situation. Maybe stupidly, she’d downloaded it onto her Kindle a few days ago and had been reading it again during her isolation. Thérèse was married to her useless husband, Camille, but desperate to be with her lover, Laurent. They murdered her husband and life should have been wonderful from then on, except it wasn’t. They were both so haunted by the knowledge of what they had done that ultimately their guilt destroyed them.

Could she live with the knowledge that she had sent Niall to his death? However much she hated him? However much he had hurt her in the past? And despite knowing he had been planning to kill her?

Would he really have gone through with “getting rid of” her? Was she being pushed by Rebecca, coerced by her into doing this? Was she being weak in not standing up to Rebecca and telling her she couldn’t go through with this? And – she churned this over and over – what was going to happen when she met Niall, face to face, shocking the hell out of him?

Or would it shock him at all?

Niall knew she was almost certainly alive and he would be mad as hell with her. Crazy mad for all she’d put him through. And she’d seen him mad before. Scary. Very scary. Definitely capable of killing, like he did with their baby. Was it smart to meet him, in pitch darkness, on a remote clifftop?

As if further dampening her thoughts, a heavy shower was pelting down outside, rattling as loud as hail on the roof of the small conservatory adjoining the kitchen. It was just gone 10 p.m.

She craved a drink, but didn’t dare risk it – being stopped and breathalysed would screw everything up. Although, she reasoned, as she sat at the little dining table beneath the glass roof, digging her fork into a microwaved pasta – turning it over, letting the steam escape, her stomach too knotted to consider eating even a mouthful – maybe that would be the easy way out of all of this? Just get drunk. Pass out at home. Apologize to Bex later.

Or have a couple of drinks and take her chances. That was so tempting right now. And if she got arrested for drunk-driving, fess up and see what happened. Surely it wasn’t illegal to disappear? OK, she’d left a trail of evidence to implicate that bastard, but she hadn’t harmed him, she hadn’t made any false claims against him. Rebecca was wrong, surely – she hadn’t committed any offence, had she?

More wisps of steam rose from the white slop in the tinfoil carton. Tagliatelle or rigatoni or cannelloni – she’d forgotten what it had said on the label. The cheesy smell made her stomach churn.

Just a small drink? A tiny whisky to settle her? One wouldn’t do any harm, would it?