She’ll be surprised when I tell her how I waited. She thinks – like everyone – that I’m confident and sure of myself. Arrogant, even. I am, now – I’ve made myself that way – but back then I wasn’t.

I was weak and nervous. I didn’t let it show, but I was.

Hardly surprising, given what had been done to me by my bitch of a mother.

She drove my father away with her constant nagging, and then married Richie.

Richie. Just remembering his name makes me furious. I could kill all the world. Burn it down.

He had what they called a ‘thing’ for young boys.

Me included.

After the first time – I was twelve – he explained what he would do to me if I told anyone. It involved pain, and humiliation.

But I did tell someone, a year later, after fifty-two weeks of Richie coming to my room once or twice or three times a week.

I told my mother. I had to escape, so I told her.

And she did nothing. She called me a liar. Said I had never liked Richie and was making it up to split them apart.

So I had no alternative. Richie had to go. He was the first person I killed, and I did it from necessity.

The strange thing was that I found I enjoyed it. We went sailing on the River Dee and he fell overboard when I capsized the boat with a well-timed gybe.

He was not a swimmer, especially when encouraged to slip under the surface by the blade of an oar. The autopsy uncovered the bruises, but they were easily explained. He had banged his head in the chaos.

Killing him made me happy, because he was gone. It also made me calm, for the first time in my life.

Every time I’ve needed that calm I have been able to find it that way. I am not a serial killer – I am not tawdry like that, I do not need a fix – but I have a right to peace of mind, don’t I? And all – well, most – of the people I have killed have deserved it.

My mother deserved it more than most. It was fitting that she died in the same way as Richie. A boating accident, which her young son survived.

A ‘cruel irony’ the local press called it. Poetic justice was the phrase I preferred. I made sure she understood that, before I pushed her head under the water.

They sent me to live with my uncle. I hated it, but then, a year later I met Annabelle. She was perfect.

She was my salvation.

I should have told her, but I was too weak. I let her slip away, and then she met that fool.

I never understood why she married him, but then she told me. He made her do it. I always knew he must have. Coercion and blackmail.