It didn’t feel like a great success. It felt like failure. It felt as if I’d lost everything all over again. My marriage, my best friend, my home, my dog—I’d been slowly recovering from those losses. But my family, my career, my foreseeable future? Without them I was a husk. A shell. And the Rooneys were the ones who’d destroyed me.

I blamed Joyce and Scott for my father’s death. In a roundabout way, they’d caused it; Dad’s blood pressure went through the roof during my trial and he never really recovered. His last years were less happy because of me. I was a constant worry to him.

I would lie in bed every night and rage at the Rooneys. I would mutter curses. Picture punishments. I would imagine running them down in my car—setting fire to both their houses—sabotaging Scott’s SUV so it would break down in the middle of nowhere at the height of summer. Whole scenarios played out in my head. I saw Joyce’s tenants destroying her rental properties. I saw Aaron becoming a famous rock musician and the Rooneys watching his rise from afar, knowing it was Krystal’s achievement and being knocked back whenever they asked for money.

Sometimes I visualised even nastier acts of revenge. Food poisoning. Acid on a toilet seat. An exploding mower.

One thing I never envisaged was shooting Scott in the hand with a nail gun.

2019

2019

SCOTT’S DEAFENING SCREAMS pursued me as I slammed through the front door and galloped towards the jetty. I was sobbing. Reeling.

I’d just nailed someone’s hand to a fucking windowsill.

Would I go to jail for it? Not if I could argue self-defence. Scott had been armed, for Chrissake.

My heart skipped a beat when I caught sight of Warren down by the boat. He’d moved. He’d rolled over. Was he coughing?

‘Warren!’ I stumbled off the road and skidded to a halt beside him. Yes! He was alive. But he looked terrible—his eyes were glazed, his lips blue. Blood welled from a wound on his scalp.

‘We’re leaving,’ I said. ‘Just wait here a minute.’ I still didn’t have fuel, so I tossed my nail gun into the tinny and leaned down to check the locker, which contained two life jackets, a bailer, a fuel line and nothing else.

No emergency beacon. No flares.

The first-aid kit was still lying where I’d dropped it. I picked it up and slung it into the boat with the nail gun.

‘Give me a minute,’ I told Warren, who was gasping and retching, his face in the mud. I left him there and hurried towards the boathouse, plunging straight inside because I knew Scott wasn’t a threat. I could hear him screaming off in the distance.