Pete staggered to his feet, swaying, and it was only the tool wedged in her armpit that held Meredith back from helping him up.

‘Off we go, then,’ said Caitlin cheerfully, pushing them out into the warm night.

We’re not the first to be in this position, thought Meredith numbly. We’re not unique. She thought of killing fields and concentration camps; massacres; people being frogmarched towards open graves they’d been forced to dig themselves first. It’s just death. Comes to us all at some point. What did she have to live for anyway, if Pete was going to die too? Nothing. It was better this way.

Just a month earlier she’d had a twin she adored and three close friends, which was actually more than enough for her, these days. Only one of them was still alive – but once all this shit came out, there was no way Paula would ever still be her friend.

All that hate and revenge, for one kiss on a silo, dressed as a teddy bear, almost thirty-five years ago. Meredith wished again she’d never laid eyes on that toxic Kansan, blithely lying her way through a hedonistic life, knowing that her red hair and green eyes would dazzle any doubts away. She probably never even had any desire for nuclear disarmament – all Greenham was to her was an endless supply of open legs and sleeping bags for her to lick her way into. Then Meredith wished that Caitlin had been honest enough to admit that her precious Sam was a girl.

And that Caitlin wasn’t a lunatic.

But then, she thought, there’s no point in all that, is there? What’s done is done, as her mother used to say. And now she was done, too. If wishes were horses … something else her mother would quote. Meredith never understood what it meant.

It was a tiny bit of comfort knowing she would die in the grounds of the estate, with the person she loved most in the world. At least the last thing she’d see and hear was the sway of dark branches, the reassuring little noises she heard through the open window of her bedroom every night, tiny claws digging, black snouts snuffling.

The grass felt soft and cool under her bare feet. Death opened her arms and smiled a dark, welcoming smile, and for a moment Meredith felt a transcendent calm as she and Pete began to stumble barefoot towards their destiny.

51

Gemma

By the time Gemma drove around the side of Minstead House to the staff gate, she was feeling flustered and anxious. It was now an hour later than she said she’d pick Meredith up, and the woman wasn’t answering her phone, nor had she replied to her texts. Nor was she where she was supposed to have been.