I expected it to be cathartic, but I feel as angry and as empty at the end of it as I did at the start. Perhaps because you haven’t read it, and may never do so. Perhaps because what I really want is answers.

You’ve explained nothing. And although part of that might be my fault, because in my seething sense of betrayal I shut you down, you should have tried. You should have bloody tried. After five years, I think I deserve it, Niall.

27

Hanson was now certain that the car was following her. The little three-car procession had turned down too many side roads for there to be any doubt about it. They were all weaving whatever complex route Niall Reakes had decided was the quickest. Hanson had been keeping well back on the almost deserted streets.

The car behind, however, had done no such thing. It had stayed close on her tail, as if willing her to notice it, and that had started to make Hanson angry.

Half a mile from Saints Close, she signalled left and pulled suddenly into a single parking space, forcing them to go past. She was confident that she could keep track of the Reakeses from here, even with a car in between.

She turned her head to watch the vehicle, expecting to see the sleek black form of the BMW. But the silhouette was all wrong. This was a smaller, older car. A Vauxhall Corsa, she thought. Or something like it. And it didn’t slow down as it passed, either. It accelerated.

Hanson let out a long breath, and moved back out onto the road. Sometimes coincidences happened, she thought. It looked as though this had been one of them. A car that just happened to be making its way along the same route.

She could just see the lights of the two cars up ahead as they turned into Saints Close. And that made her feel slightly doubtful again. Was it really likely that both drivers happened to live on one tiny close?

She slowed down as she pulled onto Saints Close. She could see the bright red illumination thrown by Niall Reakes’s Jaguar, which he’d pulled up half on the pavement outside number eleven. Further up the road, there were headlights in the act of manoeuvring. The Corsa must have driven past.

Hanson pulled in a little way from the house, close enough to give her a good view, and switched off her headlights. She watched as the Corsa completed its turn and pulled up against the kerb. Its lights died at the same time the Jaguar’s did.

Niall and Louise emerged from their car, and Hanson tried to pay attention to their manner with each other while half her attention was still on the Corsa. Nobody got out of that second car, and the lights remained off while the couple moved silently to the door.