Hanson gave a small smile. ‘Yeah, well. I’ve pretty much always got that one wrong myself.’ She gave him the very briefest of looks. ‘Maybe I don’t want to be happy.’

‘You should work on that,’ Ben said, and then gave the ghost of a smile in return.

The bartender deposited their drinks in front of them. Hanson paid, and then lifted her glass. ‘Well, I’ll drink to it anyway. To not choosing to make your life more shit.’

‘Cheers to that.’

They were in perfect unison as they lifted the glasses and drank.

It was actually on Sunday night that Jonah’s worst conversation happened.

He was back at his desk, trying to provide the CPS with sufficient reason to dismiss the case against Louise Reakes. The sound of his phone ringing was a relief at first. He didn’t recognise it for what it was, not even when he saw the name of his ex-fiancée on the screen for the third time that week.

He still didn’t know what to do. But something in her insistent contact struck him as unusual. Michelle might be in some kind of trouble. Something could be badly wrong.

The ringing took on an urgency he found hard to deny. And so he picked up.

‘Jesus, Jonah,’ she said, sounding somewhere between angry and tearful. ‘Could you just have replied to one message?’

‘Sorry,’ he said, easily manoeuvred into guilt. ‘I’ve had a really intense case. Are you … all right?’

‘No, not really,’ she said. ‘I’m … well, in a bit of a state, to be honest. We fucked up. I’m four months pregnant.’

There was a beat, while Jonah’s mind did the maths, an instinctive checking to make sure he understood what she was saying, and then he said, ‘Oh. Fuck, that’s …’

‘A massive balls-up,’ Michelle agreed, and then he heard the sound of her crying down the phone at him, and he wasn’t sure he had it in him to comfort her. Not when he could feel everything falling apart.

40

Louise

It’s time for you to read all of this. Everything I’ve written to you. Everything I wrote up until the night that almost killed me. It’s all here.

There isn’t a lot to add from the last few days. Except that I’m honestly not afraid.

That doesn’t mean I’m deluded. I know the CPS is bringing a manslaughter charge against me, and I know it’s possible that I’ll be convicted. There are a lot of women who have been convicted for killing their attackers in the past. The stats are actually quite frightening now I’ve looked into it.