Paul couldn’t stop gazing at Freya’s sleeping face, the halo of her hair on the hospital pillows. He was afraid to look away, or close his exhausted eyes, in case she was gone when he looked back. There were cuts and bruises on her skin and an antibiotic drip attached to her arm, but the steady beep of her heart monitor was the most comforting sound he’d heard in a long time.

Stop staring at me while I’m asleep, Dad, she might say if she woke now. It’s weird.

This is how it’s going to be from now on, Frey. Mum and I are never letting you out of our sight again.

Oh, God. That’s worse than nearly dying.

Maybe they would get through this by making light of it, but it was hard to imagine a time when the tension would melt from his muscles. Paul felt like he’d been catapulted through a week-long war. And he was somehow on the other side, sitting dazed amid the debris, trying to get his breath back and understand what had happened.

“I’m so sorry, Paul,” Steph said, beside him. “More than I can ever say.”

Paul turned to his wife, who looked every bit as shell-shocked as he felt.

His wife, who was not really Stephanie. Who had killed a man when she was just a teenager and indirectly caused all of this. These facts staggered inside him each time he tried to make them seem real.

“I let you assume this was your fault,” Steph said through tears. “I even assumed that too. I didn’t want to believe it could be anything to do with me. I never thought Becca would . . . I didn’t think she had the resources, let alone that she would want to hurt me this badly . . .”

Paul twisted his hands in his lap, his emotions seesawing. “It could’ve been either of us, Steph.”

She stalled and dabbed at her eyes. Freya’s green scarf was still wrapped around her neck, filthy now, but Steph wouldn’t be parted from it.

“In the church,” she said. “When I asked if you’d killed someone. It was because I recognize something in you. Always have, I suppose. I think that, like me, you know what it’s like to carry the darkest kind of guilt.”

Paul looked steadily back at her and, for just a moment, her face was Nathalie’s. He could still hardly process the fact that she wasn’t dead. But one day he would, and then maybe he’d allow himself a glimmer of relief.