All these years he must have hated her and longed for revenge. To be in that man’s life all that time. To have been part of his thoughts. She’d never imagined that the boy who spat at her in the street and swore he’d get his own back would ever see it through. But here he is. For her own part, she’d thought of him rarely. The years had passed in a busy blur of motherhood and work. She’d googled him once or twice and found nothing. She had always dared to hope he was languishing unregarded in some distant prison or that he had taken his own life. He’d changed his name and managed to walk away from his past. On those occasions that she had thought about him it was always like looking into a deep dark well inside herself and it had unnerved her. She knew if ever she saw the bastard again she might kill him. She just never expected to put her conviction to the test. He wants to draw it out, this fight between them. He wants her to suffer, to prolong her anguish. But her mind is absolutely clear now. If he’s prepared to use her own daughter as bait then he’d better be prepared to die.

A light flickers through the trees. She takes a breath and heads towards it. Zoe, she thinks, I could use your help. She moves forward along the path, the thin moonlight creeping through the still-naked branches of the trees enough, just, to keep her on track. Ahead the torchlight flares and fades like the spark of a firefly. The pulse drums in her temples and at the back of her brain, and her breath comes in fits and starts. The only sounds around her are those of the forest, a sinister rustling and the odd screech of a night bird. Is that you, Zoe? I hope so.

She moves through the clearing and comes out onto a chalk cliff. She can see them now, two figures hugging the sky, standing on the railway tracks overlooking the gorge. A rifle glints in the moonlight. There’s no way to know if they’ve seen her. She drops the torch she’s clutching in her toolbelt and, holding her hands above her head so that Cullen can see she’s unarmed, shouts, ‘I’m here, Nevis.’ She watches them shift and turn.

A voice says, ‘Hello Honor.’ Mulholland. The voice has matured but she’d know it anywhere. He is wearing hunting gear, as though he were going on a country shoot for pheasants but the rifle in his hands is aimed at Nevis. His face is twisted into an awful grimace. Beside him Nevis seems frozen, barely registering Honor’s presence. ‘Do come and join the party,’ he says, glibly. She wonders if he has gone mad.