She stared up at him, clocking his expression. Gasping, she dragged herself away. Looking over to where Jared lay, she jolted. His body was in shadow, his face, previously so full of pain and distress as he begged her to stay with him, now pale and motionless, his turquoise eyes closed. NO …

Connie watched as Devan carefully picked up the bigger pieces of glass from the kitchen floor and swept the rest into a dustpan, tipping the contents into a cardboard box. Then she waited in numb silence, her sore ankle raised on a chair, as he followed the trail of splinters trampled through the house by the police and paramedics with the vacuum cleaner. She was still wearing her coat because it was ice cold in the house, although she’d replaced her damp clothes with pyjamas. The noise of the vacuum, in her sensitive state, sounded brutal and deafening.

When he’d finished clearing up, Devan held out a dusty bottle he’d found at the back of the cupboard. ‘I’ve had enough tea for one night.’

The police had stayed after the ambulance, with Jared’s body, drove off into the rainy darkness. Stacy took charge and made tea – which was fortunate, because both Connie and Devan were incapable.

Sergeant Youngs listened as Devan attempted to fill her in. But his sentences were jumbled with tiredness, scarcely coherent. Connie said nothing. She was beyond speech, beyond any feeling at all.

When Devan had finished the garbled tale, the policewoman was mercifully pragmatic. ‘Listen, sir,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you both come down to the station in the morning and we can take a proper statement? You’ll be in shock, after all you’ve just been through. You need to get those wet clothes off, have some rest.’ She’d paused, eyeing them both closely. ‘Do you want someone to stay with you tonight?’ She glanced across at her colleague, who nodded. ‘That kitchen door’s not secure …’

‘No, thank you. We’ll be fine,’ Devan had said firmly, and Connie had breathed a sigh of relief.

Now she nodded. ‘Brandy would be good.’

‘We can take it up to bed. It’s nithering down here,’ Devan added.

Connie thought of the bedroom and what had recently gone on there. She trembled, her spine prickling, the hairs rising on the back of her neck, as if Jared himself had walked over her grave. ‘Caty’s room?’

The spare bed was chilly, too, but they kept their coats on and pulled the covers round them as they sat propped against the rattan headboard, their hands clasping the tumblers containing the brandy, which burned a warming path into Connie’s system.

A shattered silence filled the room. It was gone five in the morning. Dawn wouldn’t be for a couple of hours yet, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep.

‘This is all my fault,’ she said.