‘You failed, Caitlin. Again. What a waste of your life, eh? What a waste of Ralph’s life, Andrea’s life, Andrea’s baby’s life. But you still failed. You didn’t get me, and you didn’t get Pete, and now we’re going to be free of you forever because you’ll never be free again, not now your little puppet is dead. You spent the best part of thirty years trying to make my life a misery, and it hasn’t worked.’

‘It was all for Sam,’ Brown whispered, all defiance extinguished, and Meredith laughed bitterly.

‘Sam never gave a shit about you, or me. And I don’t think you believe that, anyway. You just wanted someone else to blame for your psychopathic behaviour, and so you decided it was all my fault.’

The armed-response team crashed through the trees, at the exact moment Meredith spat in Brown’s face. ‘You’re pathetic.’

Epilogue

A year later
Meredith

The plane was poised at the top of the runway, at that specific moment in time where it seemed that the thrumming anticipation of the passengers was all that would propel it into the sky. Meredith had forgotten what this felt like. Last time she was on an aeroplane had been on the final tour Cohen did in Japan, in 1994. She wasn’t nervous, though. She was looking forward to it so much that she felt she could probably fly unaided.

‘Welcome to Flight BA352 to Ankara,’ intoned the captain over the tannoy.

‘Look at us, going on holiday like normal people,’ she said to Pete, whose long legs were sticking out ahead of him in the bulkhead.

‘About bloody time, too,’ he said. ‘Can’t imagine anyone’s ever needed a holiday more than we do.’

They’d had to wait until after Catherine Brown’s murder trial, although her three life sentences without parole back in Rampton had been worth it.

The trial had been gruelling in the extreme. All sorts of details the twins had been unaware of had been produced: including Graeme’s van, found parked near the spot in the woods at the back of Minstead, equipped with plastic sheeting, spades and shovels, part of the preparations to bury Meredith and Pete’s bodies. They’d had to listen to Andrea’s parents sobbing in the public gallery behind them, day after day, their Hungarian translator muttering the horrific details quietly into their ears throughout.

Paula had pushed past Meredith in the corridor after the session in which she gave evidence. She hadn’t spoken to her, and her son, Jackson, at her side, had hissed, ‘Slag.’