The memory of that horror, a horror Richard had condoned, had propelled her from the car. Luck had been on her side, with the arrival of the fire engines, but she would have tried to get out anyway, even if they hadn’t helped her escape.

After that, the dash through the woods, the triumphant feeling that she had lost him in the smoke, then the fear she too had missed the path to Ard Choille and safety, from Richard at least.

And all the time she ran towards the flames, the phrase out of the frying pan, into the fire replayed in her head. By the time she reached the lochan, the fire seemed so close there was nowhere left to go except into the water.

Only to discover Richard had been right behind her all the time.

He had been gentle at first. Urging her out, holding his hand out to her. She hated him then for his contrived concern, so she told him the baby wasn’t his. That was what had triggered his assault. That was why he’d tried to drown her.

She had made him attack her when she might have avoided it, and Greg had almost paid the price for that, had Josh not come along to prevent him from being the one arrested for attempted murder.

She was bad news for Greg, whatever happened. He would be better off without her and the problems this child would bring.

Greg

They’d told him at the shop that he would find her here. He wondered why she had come to the graveyard. The miscarriage had happened so early in the pregnancy that Mac had neither a birth nor a death certificate. Nor a grave.

Caroline had found that difficult to bear. It was as though Mac had just been a dream, she’d said.

His response had been to remind her of the ultrasound photo they had. He’d told her Mac would always be in their hearts.

Her look then had suggested his words were hollow. They hadn’t been, but they must have seemed so because of what had happened.

Slumped on the bench that overlooked the graves beyond the white fence, she was so still, he questioned as he approached if she was even alive.

On calling her name, she looked up, her face ravaged by fear and grief. When she saw who it was, he watched her strive to muster herself.

‘Greg. I was glad to hear you and Joanne are okay. That man came into the shop. Said he was a friend of Joanne’s and heard she was staying in the village and did I know where.’ She halted there. ‘I told him she was at Beanach. It’s my fault he went there.’ She looked stricken by that.

‘It’s okay. You weren’t to know,’ Greg said.

‘I don’t understand. Why did he attack her?’