‘Something had to have changed,’ Vera said, scratching a patch of skin beneath her ear. Her breaths came ragged, and her hand continued to worry at the same spot, and when she pulled it away, there was a flash of blood beneath her nail; a tiny trickle of red crawled down her neck. I grabbed a tissue from the pack I’d shoved into my pocket and pressed it into her hand. Vera held it to her neck. I watched her, crumpled like that, cracking beneath her grief, and for a split second, I wondered: Why had she gone to the cabin this morning? Were there things she wasn’t telling me? Things she knew but didn’t trust me with?

Was there any way she could have …

The idea sickened me, but it came all the same.

Could she have seen John and me, gotten angry, changed her plan …

‘Vera,’ I said, as carefully as I could manage. ‘Why were you over there? You were supposed to wait for him to contact you.’

She stiffened. ‘He’s my husband, Lucy, and I just knew – this morning, I woke up early, and, god, I just had this feeling,’ she said. ‘I had this awful, terrifying feeling. I don’t know how, but I knew something was wrong, and I – I was right.’

Her shoulders sank, and sobs took her over.

Waves of nausea hit me, acid rising in my throat. I felt guilty for having asked the question, for doubting her even for a minute. She loved him, she was his wife, and now she’d lost him.

‘I found him, just lying there,’ Vera went on, her eyes clouding as she again began to scratch, this time at her throat. ‘In a pool of blood. It was awful. But even worse than that, he was just … blue.’

Trying to push the images away, I took her hand in mine, laced my fingers through hers, and squeezed.

‘You really don’t know anything?’ she asked.

I disentangled her hand from mine. ‘No,’ I said softly. ‘No, of course not.’

Was that the truth? I knew Davis was angry, that he wanted to pay me back, that he could very well know where I was by now. That he kept a knife on him – always.

Careful, rigorous, perfectionist Davis. Murder was an escalation, but hardly an impossibility.

‘I’m just as shocked as you are,’ I said. ‘You have to believe me.’

She nodded, tears leaking from her eyes. ‘I do. I just …’ She paused. ‘I don’t understand what happened. It was never supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be just us. It was …’ She gasped. ‘It was supposed to be a new start for us.’

Her body shook all over, and I held her again, pulling her close. Then, suddenly, she looked up. ‘You’re not going, are you?’

‘What?’