‘Is Niall there?’ Louise called from behind the curtain. ‘I want to see him.’

And Niall Reakes had surprised Jonah by crying as he cuddled his wife. He had kissed her again and again and told her he was sorry.

Patrick Moorcroft surprised Jonah almost as much by coming to advise Louise in person. He was waiting at Southampton Central by the time she’d been discharged at one in the morning.

Niall had followed his wife to the station and agreed to wait in the relatives’ room for as long as it took. Though Louise had told him to get some sleep if he could. That he looked exhausted. She had suddenly seemed like a parent looking out for a child, and it had been a strange thing to watch.

What followed was the first interview in which Louise seemed unafraid. She sat up straight in her chair, apparently unaffected by tiredness or injury except for the huskiness of her voice. And she was calm and rational as she told them what she’d finally remembered about that Friday night.

‘I’d seen Alex’s face so many times. I looked him up online, watched some of his videos … and I suppose, without realising it, I started to overlay him onto other things, so when I began to remember sitting at the bar, I just assumed it was with him.’ She shook her head, her mouth tight. ‘Probably partly a guilty conscience at work.’

She explained to them April’s idea of going out in Portsmouth, and her own terror of being attacked again.

‘I just thought … that I would never have survived last time if I hadn’t got my hands on a knife,’ she said. ‘And it made me feel like I could face going if I knew I had one.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I can’t tell you how little I actually believed that I’d use it. But I suppose I became the same as every other terrified knife-carrying adult out there.’

‘Weren’t you afraid of what you might be capable of?’ Jonah asked her. ‘You thought you’d killed Alex Plaskitt. Did you not think you might kill again, but without cause?’

Louise shook her head, and said, very clearly, ‘I was thinking of nothing more than surviving. I’m sorry.’ She frowned, after that. ‘Though I’m not, really. I wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t taken it with me, would I?’

And then she’d told them about Charlie’s attack on her, and how stupid she’d been from the first.

‘I panicked, and I did the wrong thing,’ she said. ‘I should never have left the club. I should have gone to the ladies’ and found April.’