‘I will shoot you.’

‘No, you won’t.’ Michael walks right up to me, planting his chest at the end of the barrel. ‘You’d feel too guilty. It’d tear you up.’

‘Pretty much the opposite of you then.’

‘You were the closest thing I came to feeling anything. Did you know that? The day you were born … I understood, just for a moment. What it was like to feel like everyone else does. It was awful. Horrible. Like torture.’ His mouth moves in that odd way of his. ‘So you can understand. I’m in no hurry to connect with that part of myself again. But I don’t wish you dead, Liberty. You’re a part of me and I want you to live on.’

‘I don’t want to be a part of you,’ I say.

‘I know that, Liberty. I never had any more children, did I? You have to say that for me. Give me the gun now. We can still make this right. If you pull that trigger, you’ll create a legend. A rock star scrubbed out by the daughter of a crazed groupie. And then do you know what will happen? The whole world will tear you and your mother to shreds.’

Michael grabs the barrel and pulls the whole gun from my hands.

‘Get back,’ he shouts, eyes dark and furious. ‘Get back. Get back or I’ll shoot the damn thing. Now I’m telling you, Liberty. Walk to the gate.’

‘You won’t shoot. You’re on camera.’

Michael stiffens. ‘No, love. The gate camera can’t see us from here.’

‘Smile.’ I put a hand to the smiley face on my T-shirt. ‘You’re being live streamed. The whole world can see you, Michael Reyji Ray. As you really are. Mask off. This badge is a camera. That’s the thing about image, isn’t it? One bad picture and it’s all over.’

Michael’s face contorts with rage. He is a man on the edge. He has nothing to lose. He takes aim and pulls the trigger.

Once upon a time …

Fire crept up the walls, eating at the roof timbers. Tiles fell and smashed.

‘You just need a reason,’ I told Annalise, my voice high and afraid. ‘A reason to live. Or you won’t make it. You have a baby. Make this baby your reason.’

But Annalise didn’t move. Her breathing was barely there now, and she didn’t flinch as tiles dropped.

It’s something no one ever prepares you for, hearing another human being take their last breath. Shallow breathing became stop, start, and then nothing at all.

‘Annalise?’ I knelt beside her, my warm forehead to her cold one, trying to put life back into her.

Baby Reign had fallen asleep by then, into a blissful other-world. A place nobody could hurt her.

‘You have a reason to live,’ I whispered, tears falling. ‘You can’t give up.’