Abby, ragged and tired, fought once more against her son, then collapsed into his arms. Ed punched triple zero into his phone and made the call, but he didn’t let her go. He just held her there, rocking her back and forth, the way she had rocked him when he was a baby.

A few minutes later, she heard police sirens in the distance, getting closer and closer.

Abby looked at the widow. The woman’s fingers were twitching.

‘I think she’s

waking up.’

Consciousness drifted in around the edges of the black. Kate woke to sharp pain. Her lips were wet and tasted like blood. The air smelled like shit. She was lying in a shallow pool of her own blood in Abby Gilpin’s house, but she wasn’t dead.

‘Help,’ she managed to say.

‘Help is here,’ a voice said. It was Bobbi Eckman. She was kneeling over her.

‘I…’

‘Try not to speak,’ Eckman said. ‘The ambos are on their way. You’re going to be okay, Mrs Keddie. Kate. You’re safe now.’

32

THE WIFE

Abby sat in the same windowless room at Belport Police Station where, twenty-three years earlier, Ray had confessed to the murder of David Stemple. Bobbi was on her way in to talk to her. She would have a lot of questions, but for the first time in many years, all Abby had to do was tell the truth.

She would be going away then, for a long time, she reckoned. Ray would be getting out just as she was going in. The thought stirred a smile on her face.

Like ships passing in the night, she thought.

Beneath the crushing grief of what she’d lived through and the horror of what she’d done, there was something else, brewing on the horizon. A strange and forgotten sensation.

Relief.

She hoped, at least, that Ed was feeling it too.

33

THE WIDOW

Seventy-two hours after her attack, Kate was discharged from the hospital. She was full of stitches, swollen and sore, punched up like a pin cushion and emptied out, but she was awake, she was there, she was present, and she could finally go home.

Fisher and Pam had come to pick her up. They were due to catch the four pm ferry from Belport back to the mainland, but they arrived at Elk Harbour early, so Kate and Mia walked down to the beach.

Watching her daughter, Kate thought about what Abby had asked her on the night of the attack. Is there anything you wouldn’t do for your daughter?

There wasn’t. It would take a long time for Kate to admit it to herself, and even then, it would hurt like hell, but she understood Abby. She even empathised with her. If it meant protecting Mia, she would have cut down as many men as it took. Even John.

‘There but by the grace of God go I,’ she said.