I wait outside on the street in the rain for Stuart to pick me up. I’m too emotional and tired to drive. I told Stuart that Christian is my grief counselor. It’s true, really.

Stuart is late.

I don’t take out my umbrella. I enjoy the sensation of getting wet, the fresh drops on my face. I’ve always found it hard after a therapy session to switch off. This time is no different. I can’t erase the image of Greg’s eyes, the sound of the stone hitting his skull or Camilla’s hardened expression and the knife penetrating Greg’s throat.

Was it the exhaustion, was it anger, fear? What was it that made me so determined to get involved, to silence him? I’m still shocked by my own rage. The desire came from somewhere deep within. I genuinely felt such a rush of protection toward my family, that it was inevitable. If not then, if not that way, then maybe another. It’s hard to know. I’d love to debate it—properly debate it—with Christian, rather than hint “at something bad, something irreversible, feeling enormous guilt at being the last person to see my friend alive,” but I have to work within the only safe boundary I’ve got. Which is myself.

When Stuart pulls up, I open the passenger door, sit down and twist around to face the back and give Jack a smile. His car seat is empty.

“Where’s Jack?”

“Deborah is looking after him. She’s going to pick the children up from school, too. We’re not expected back for a while.”

Stuart doesn’t take the expected route home. Instead he drives toward a different part of the forest.

“Where are we going?”

“We need to talk.”

I don’t like the sound of this at all. Yet, I can’t think of the right things to ask or say.

It’s only as he starts driving up a track, that I realize where he’s headed. The lodge. My insides knot.

He pulls over.

My heart beats faster.

“I think this is the spot. It looks like the place from the news,” he says before he switches off the ignition and twists around in the driver’s seat so that he can fully look at me. His expression is intense. “You’re going to need me, in a perverse kind of a way, just like Nina did. To be your alibi.”

Oh. My. God.

“You’ve been acting strangely,” he continues. “I recognize the signs. Guilt. I appreciate what you’ve done, Marie. Greg was a bad man. He targeted Nina when she was vulnerable.”

“How did you know?”

“She told me about him. She didn’t want me finding anything out after she was gone that she couldn’t atone or apologize for.”

“But you’ve never said anything—”

“I didn’t blame her. I blamed him. Then, I was so grief-stricken after she died that in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t seem important anymore. But he kept coming to the book group, getting friendly with Camilla, then you, as if he thought I didn’t know. When you told me he was with Camilla that one night, I was concerned. Yet things have worked out. After all, give someone enough rope...”