‘What we did was wrong,’ Robert tells her, his voice desperate. ‘But you must believe that we’ve always loved you, always wanted you and we’ve tried our best to make you happy.’

‘That’s bollocks,’ she shouts at him. ‘You’re both liars and murderers and you’ve destroyed my life.’

Robert takes a step forward and Charlotte responds by moving away from him.

‘We have to talk this through,’ he says to her. ‘I’m sure we can make you understand that …’

Charlotte bares her teeth and cuts him off. ‘You’re as fucking crazy as she is if you think I can ever forgive you.’

And then she does something that takes them both by surprise. She grabs a knife from the block on the worktop and threatens to cut her wrist with it.

‘You told me not to shoot Neil, but I don’t reckon you’ll mind if I kill myself,’ she screams at them. ‘Because if I do, I won’t be able to tell the police what you did. And you can then get on with your rotten lives.’

Robert is about to tell her to put the knife down when Mary decides to take more decisive action. She hurls herself forward and tries to take the knife away from Charlotte.

But Charlotte resists and holds onto it. A fierce struggle ensues. The pair fall to the floor with Mary on top.

Before Robert can get to them Charlotte lets out a painful cry and her body goes limp.

It’s not until Mary rolls off her that they see the knife buried deep in Charlotte’s stomach and the blood spreading across her blouse.

Mary gasps. ‘My God, I didn’t mean for that to happen. Please believe me. It was an accident.’

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

It suddenly got too much for William Nash. After describing how Charlotte was stabbed, he broke down and tears pushed out of his eyes, accompanied by great racking sobs.

‘I can appreciate how hard this is for you, Mr Nash,’ James said. ‘But I need to know what happened after that.’

James let out a slow breath. What Nash had told them had come as a huge shock, but he didn’t doubt that it was all true. It was in line with all of the evidence from the two crimes.

Suddenly almost everything had fallen into place, and James now knew most of the answers to the questions that had been plaguing him.

It was no longer a mystery why Simon and Amanda Roth had died. Or why their daughter Megan had disappeared. Or why Charlotte suspected Mary had been unfaithful. The ancestry test result was obviously what had upset her that day in the charity shop when she received the envelope Fiona McCarthy mentioned.

But none of it filled James with any sense of satisfaction, even though he was in a position to bring one of his most challenging investigations to a successful conclusion.