She saw the hesitation in his face and knew her words had struck home – enough to sow doubt about whether she was telling the truth or not. ‘Still going to shove me over the edge?’

‘Look, we need to talk,’ he said. ‘Like, those texts – they were just a joke, you know.’

‘Great joke, so funny, they had me in hysterics. Can’t remember when I laughed so much, Niall. Especially the bit about my will, thinking you would inherit everything when I was gone. And you and your lover had a plan. You told her you knew exactly how to kill me and dispose of my body so it would never be found. I particularly liked that bit where you told her that if the police couldn’t find a body, it made a prosecution very hard. A “no body” murder, I think you called it, right?’

He stared at her in numb silence.

‘So, I thought I would turn the tables. You deserve it. You killed our unborn baby and ruined my life, you evil bastard. Can a dead person commit a murder, Niall?’

‘There’s one flaw in that, Eden,’ he said, more calmly now. ‘The police don’t believe you’re dead.’

‘Obviously not if they’ve wired me with a mic.’ She smiled. ‘Do you want to hear what your lover told me, while we were in bed together?’

‘What?’ Now he stared at her both confused and dumbstruck.

Rebecca had told her exactly the words to say and the moves to make. Keep taunting him, ramping it up, and up again, until he lunged at her, and as he did so to instantly hit the ground. He would trip over her and be gone, over the edge.

But she couldn’t do it. She knew the words, what she had to say. The taunt about his manhood. The first time he’d ever hit her was when she had done that, and totally unintentionally then.

The script was so clear in her head now. She just had to say the words and he would lunge, he was that livid.

She also told me you couldn’t satisfy her.

But the words lodged in her throat. She couldn’t get them out.

Instead, she stared at him, at her husband, at the man she hated so much, on the edge of a 500-foot drop, knowing just how easily he could kill her, and that he could do it without any sense of remorse. But she was unable to spit out the words that would trigger him.

‘You don’t have a wiretap, Eden. You and I have watched enough police documentaries to know that. Police never put a key witness in danger like this. You’re lying. Bullshit. This is just you and me. No one’s listening. No one’s coming to save you. You’re lying about the police and Rebecca. Whatever your crazy plan is, your stupid ploy, you’ve actually just made it very easy for me.’

She froze. Her eyes adjusting more and more to the darkness. Staring at him, at the anger in his face.