The Chertsey maisonette had never really looked or felt lived-in. No pictures on the wall; no plants to bring color and life. Yet despite the scarcity of furniture or accessories (and Steph had made tentative offers to “brighten up the place”), it had always felt claustrophobic, as if congested with something other than the normal stuff of a home.

Though the place was small, its rent and upkeep had cut harshly into Steph’s salary over the last four years. The rent was particularly high, in return for a no-questions-asked landlord, an agreement that she could pay in cash, and no official paperwork or real names involved. Occasionally, and ashamedly, she’d had to borrow from the account where Paul’s “severance package” from the police sat barely touched, saved for Freya’s university fees, wedding, house deposit. He’d asked her about a withdrawal once and she’d made an excuse about emergency car repairs. Paul had accepted her explanation, just as his original “Did you take seven hundred pounds out of the savings?” had been more curious than interrogatory.

He’d trusted her. Even though he’d once been trained to be suspicious, observant. It seemed their daughter was the one with those attributes now.

Steph felt sick as she glanced up at the curtains of the maisonette. She’d done the same thing countless times before, flicking her eyes toward the upper floor as she approached, always with mixed emotions. Sometimes she’d looked forward to the visits, in a strange way, but there’d also been apprehension, guilt, the suffocating feeling of a responsibility she’d never be free from. Now it was all heightened by fury, and fear . . . and hope. Dizzying hope that Freya might somehow be there.

A bloodied coat doesn’t mean the end, she told herself yet again.

She just couldn’t waste any more time.

It was this thought, and the memory of the note she and Emma had found, that made her take the knife from the pocket of Paul’s jacket and slip it up her sleeve. She shivered at the metal against her skin, shed the heavy coat, and got out of the car. Fleetingly, she remembered she’d left the shoebox and its contents in the hallway of their house. The exhibits of her past, which she’d guarded so carefully. She dismissed the thought before it could divert her. It didn’t matter anymore.