Anita nodded. ‘Paula knows that. But she wants to be punished. Because she feels guilty about the things she’s done.’ The silence after that went on for several uncomfortable beats too long, long enough for Anita to realise Rohan understood that the bad things Paula had done must include more than the assaults in the pub.

He kept his gaze locked on the road ahead as he said, ‘I’m not going to ask you what that means.’

‘Okay,’ Anita replied.

It was just as well this exchange happened when they were in the car, both facing forward. If they’d made eye contact in that moment, Anita wasn’t confident she would have been able to conceal anything from him. Of course, Rohan had no reason to suspect Paula had killed Ian Ferguson, but it was likely he guessed Paula had something to do with John Santino’s death and that Anita knew about it.

After that conversation in the car, there was a kind of tacit agreement: he would never ask her and she would never tell him.

Anita would always have to live with her guilt about concealing the two murders. It was like carrying a chunk of darkness around inside. For the sake of Rochelle and Brooke and their kids, she would keep Paula’s secret, but she could never feel completely at ease with that.

In the months after she killed Curtis Wigney, Anita waited for something like crippling remorse to hit her, but it never really did. That man was going to kill Paula. She hated that it had happened, but she never doubted she’d done the right thing. It was surprising—she was someone generally simmering with self-doubt, but not when it came to the most extreme thing she’d ever done.

When Anita passed through security at Silverwater and entered the visiting area, she nodded hello to the prison officers she’d come to know. To begin with, the staff had assumed Anita was Paula’s romantic partner, but when Rohan joined her on a few visits, it shook their theory. Then one of the staff twigged that Anita was the woman who’d shot the deadshit guy down the south coast and the officers were even more confused by her. She quite enjoyed giving off an air of mystery.

Paula walked out in her dull green prison tracksuit. ‘Hello, lovely. Thanks for coming.’

‘We’ve discussed this,’ Anita reminded her. ‘You don’t have to thank me every time I visit.’