It went up like a bomb, and the blast of heat forced her back.

She ran for twenty yards, then turned back to look. The Range Rover had been transformed into the biggest bonfire she had ever seen. She wasn’t sure which way the church was. Instead, she saw a footpath sign, and decided that this would be the best way to avoid being spotted. It looked like a sunny day, and the first rays that lit her face made her think of Bangkok, and the new life that awaited her there.

Melanie Perry pulled up at the traffic lights, revving the engine in her eagerness to get on the trail of the man she now hated. ‘You really thought you were going to get away with this, didn’t you?’ She didn’t normally talk to herself, but now she was shouting over Classic FM, which she had put on hoping it would calm her. ‘I trusted you, bastard. I gave you everything. I bailed you out with thousands that I could ill afford. When I think that I remortgaged my own house, sweet Jesus, what was I thinking? Now I don’t even know whether to believe that you really have a sick sister in Colorado with some expensive medical bills. But, Christ, didn’t I fall for it?’

She arrived at the head office of AWL Properties, a small modern office next to a car dealership on the edge of Woking. Kyle rented at least two if not more of the AWL properties. ‘Ah yes, Angie bloody Wright,’ Mel shouted at no one in particular. ‘I bet he fooled you too.’ It was a Sunday, and AWL’s office was closed, but the car showroom was just opening.

Mel had dressed up purely for this part of the operation, and marched into the showroom. A young man of perhaps twenty-five in a suit and slicked back hair offered her a broad grin as he came out to greet her. ‘Hello madam.’ His wholesome display of insincerity reminded her of Kyle, and for a moment she imagined whipping out the sushi knife, and neatly beheading him. She shocked herself with the lucidity of her imagination, the spray of red over the shiny bonnet of the white BMW he stood next to, his perfectly coiffed head bouncing and clattering to the floor. The chiselled features not his but Kyle’s.

‘You can save your patter. I’m Mel Perry, head of sales at AWL. I need the spare office keys, which I know you keep in that filing cabinet.’ She pointed behind him through the internal glass window into the dealership office. She remembered. It was almost exactly two years ago that Kyle had brought her there and tried exactly the same stunt one evening, in order to get in. Once they had managed to get into the AWL office, he tore her clothes off and they had had passionate, in fact almost unbelievable, sex on the client settee. He had grabbed her throat and told her that she had been too noisy. But with him she never knew how to be quiet.