Sitting at her apartment window, Naomi’s eyes danced over the city’s twinkling lights. The streets were thick with traffic, with the backdrop of pedestrians’ footsteps below. A swell of sadness grew heavy in her chest. She had outgrown her snug London apartment, but it was hitting home how much she’d miss her little flat. It was virtually the size of a shoe box, but the best she’d been able to hope for on her previous income. Crime reporting was not a lucrative career, but at least she never ran out of material. She glanced at the skyline that still had the power to mesmerise. Only in London could buildings of steel and glass tower over fourteenth-century churches and ancient Roman walls. It housed an abundance of diversity, where the filthy rich and despairingly poor coexisted. These were the people embedded in the crimes she had written so passionately about. The question was, could her alter ego, Marsha Bowers, acclimatise to a new life in the countryside and become a stay-at-home wife? She curled her fingers around the snow globe as she picked it up from the window sill, balancing its steady weight in her hand. She would hide it in her handbag during the move. Her favourite things had a habit of breaking when Morgan was around. Holding the globe upwards, she watched it catch the light. It contained an idyllic scene: a tiny cottage with a white picket fence bordered by woodland. A snowman was in the garden, with a miniature carrot for a nose. The globe had been gifted by her father, and now her dream home was waiting for her. She gave it a quick shake, watching the snow settle. She had fantasised about living in such a place, where birdsong replaced the backdrop of sirens and the scent of pine cones lingered instead of diesel fumes. But her new stepdaughter Morgan brought with her a sense of foreboding. It alarmed Naomi to be the focus of so much hatred: a quiet, simmering anger bubbling beneath the surface, which Morgan kept cleverly hidden when her father was around.