Though ironically, in the end, it wasn’t Naomi who had threatened to release him from his guilt, and damn me to perdition.

It was Kyle.

He was the only one who could really destroy the glass house I’d put myself in. Because only he knew I’d left the cottage to meet him that night.

I couldn’t let him tell Michael that whilst he’d been torturing himself for all these years, unable to understand how his youngest child had managed to slip out of a door that he was so sure he’d secured, his wife had unlocked it to spend an illicit hour with another man. He couldn’t ever know that all the time our little boy was wandering aimlessly in the dark, his mother was wondering how long she could be out for. Or that when the water was lapping above him, she was fantasizing that without children, she’d be able to live the life she wanted.

I paid the ultimate price for my wicked thoughts and actions – but if Kyle told Michael the truth, I’d have to take the blame as well, and I’ve spent far too long apportioning that to someone else.

So the game’s up, and Michael lost. Naomi too, unluckily for her. She was, quite literally, in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, luckily for me, she played right into my hands – even though the police still seem to be questioning her motive.

‘Maybe she really did mean, “If I can’t have you, no one will,”’ I offer, trying to steer them in the right direction.

Robson looks at me questioningly and my pores prickle.

‘I thought she’d written something like that in a letter to him?’ I say, my throat drying up as I scramble to remember whether they’d told me that, or if I’ve once again allowed my growing sense of unease to trip me up.

I have to keep my nerve. I’m so close to walking out of here as a free woman. Free of the constraints Michael has made me feel bound by. Free of the fear that one day he would find out what I did. Now, there’s only Kyle standing between me and the lie that I’ll take to my grave – but by this time tomorrow he will no longer be a liability either.

‘I didn’t know you were aware of the contents of Mrs Chandler’s emails to your husband,’ says Robson, eyeing me intently.

I picture the unsightly blotches that must surely be spreading up from my neck, their red tentacles creeping onto my face. ‘He showed them to me,’ I say, as my right leg trembles uncontrollably. ‘Because he was so scared of what she might do.’

‘So he really thought she was capable of something like this?’