Shit! Emad thought in panic. Why hadn’t they checked that she and her sidekick were actually dead? Mavis would kill him. And then the adrenaline kicked in and he no longer had any conscious thoughts other than protecting Meredith and Gemma where they sat. With a yell he dropped his phone and threw himself with full force at the bloodied woman, just as she started to plunge the knife down, knocking her to the ground sideways, relieved to see the weapon fly out of her blood-slick hand.

Brown screamed with weak fury as Emad tried to roll her onto her front and sit on her, but she was so large and heavy, he couldn’t shift her before she managed to headbutt him, his nose exploding with pain and blood that he could feel running down over his mouth and neck and making a sticky, matted nest in his chest hair.

Gemma had leaped up and run across to him, yanking at the handcuffs attached to the waistband of her trousers.

‘Get her feet,’ she barked, kicking Brown over onto her front and holding her down with her foot until she could wrench the woman’s arms behind her back and cuff them together.

Emad kneeled on Brown’s thrashing feet, trying to ignore his busted septum, every movement she made under his shins sending pain stabbing through his skull.

They finally managed to incapacitate her, Gemma pressing the woman’s face into the loamy forest floor, harder than was strictly necessary. Lights and shouts could be seen and heard through the trees. Backup was here.

Meredith, bare-legged with Gemma’s jumper just about covering her hips, had got to her feet and made her way over to where the three of them variously sat and lay. She crouched slowly down next to Catherine, reaching out and pushing Gemma’s hand away from the back of the woman’s head, replacing it with her own, seeming to not care that she was still naked from the waist down. She grabbed a handful of Catherine’s hair and yanked it, until Catherine’s doughy, bloody face was revealed, now covered with rotting leaves and soil, looking as though she had just been dug up.

Meredith locked eyes with her as the footsteps and bobbing lights grew closer. Catherine’s glare didn’t flinch away, a last gesture of defiance. Meredith smiled, slowly, her voice sounding stronger and more menacing than Emad had ever heard it.