‘That’s right. Because she’s been helping me.’ I gesture at the island. ‘We did this all together. Lured you here. I thought about all the ways I wanted you to suffer. I wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine. How did you like it?’

Laura appears at my side. She’s found the courage to come near the injured animal now that she knows he’s disabled in a trap. She hovers at my shoulder and Ethan looks between us, shaking his head in confusion, trying to piece it together. If only he knew what it had taken to plan all this; what lengths we’ve gone to, not just to escape from him and make sure he never makes another woman his prey, but to punish him the way he deserves to be punished.

‘Laura,’ he says to her, pleading. ‘Help me!’

She doesn’t say anything.

‘Do something! My leg …’ he sobs.

I stand up and look at Laura. She gives me a tremulous smile. I smile back at her and then we hug each other, clutching each other hard, leaning into each other. ‘We did it,’ I whisper in her ear.

I feel her nod against my shoulder. Her body, rigid from months of tension and frighteningly skeletal, collapses like a building’s foundations giving way after an earthquake, and she staggers against me. But then she takes a deep breath, straightens and pulls back, finding another sub-foundation of strength within her. She looks me in the eye and even through the still pouring rain I can make out the glimmer of determination in her expression; the courage that I knew was in her all along, and which at first she doubted. Ethan couldn’t stamp it out, no matter how hard he tried.

‘What are you doing?’ Ethan yells at her. ‘Laura, please?’

Laura squeezes my hand and then she kneels down beside him. I worry for a moment that her softness and fragility will make her cave, that the sight of the blood on his hands and the gory mess of his leg will make her change her mind and want to help him. And I’m afraid, because that isn’t the plan. The plan is to watch him bleed to death.

‘Go to hell, you bastard,’ Laura says, and I realise she’s a lot stronger than she looks.

Quick as a viper Ethan grabs her wrist and she lets out a yelp of fright, struggling to pull free. He won’t let go; he drags her towards him so her face is pressed to his. ‘You bitch,’ he hisses. ‘I’ll kill you.’

‘Like you did my mother?’ she shouts back at him, still struggling to free herself.

I smash the stock of the gun into his shoulder and he lets go with a scream of fury. Laura scrambles back through the mud away from him, and I help her to her feet.