‘Keep your voice down, please.’ Catherine’s neck was red and blotchy. ‘Let’s not give ourselves away on the first day.’

‘I don’t want to be here. Don’t you understand that?’ Honor was shouting now. ‘This is nothing to do with me and everything to do with you. Why do Dad and I have to suffer for what you’ve done?’

Honor was standing on the bed, her colour hectic, hair falling in strands around her face. The anger thrummed from her, a physical thing. She spat out the words, as if the taste of truth was unpalatable. Catherine didn’t have an answer because there wasn’t one.

Because you love me was the only reply she could think of. But the needlessness of it, the guilt of putting her family through this ordeal – and an urge to cleanse herself with the truth – threatened to consume her.

‘What’s going on?’ Edward was sitting up on the double bed, rubbing his eyes, his hair sticking up, shirt crumpled. He looked exhausted.

‘Her,’ said Honor, jerking her head in the direction of her mother.

Edward sighed, but did not chastise his daughter for her rudeness. Instead, he looked his wife in the eye for the first time in hours. ‘What I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘is why you killed them.’

Their cruelty, she wanted to say. The taking apart of a childhood, layer by painful layer. The threat of violence, and the scars it left. But if the court hadn’t accepted this in mitigation, why would he? In any case, she hadn’t killed them and could not bring herself to find excuses for so savage an act to the man she loved most in the world.

‘Let’s go and get some fresh air,’ he said, disappointed by her silence. From the tone of his voice, it was clear Catherine wasn’t invited.

As soon as they were gone, Catherine opened a window, the crisp air cooling the rush of blood in her veins.

Perhaps it would be better for them all if she walked out of this hotel and disappeared from their lives. It wouldn’t be the first time she had cut all ties, hauled up the anchor and moved on.

But a fury of a different kind burned within her, drawing its heat from the injustices she had suffered. This was her family. She loved them, and she would fight for them, even if it meant throwing herself to the lions.

She uncapped a bottle of water and switched on her laptop. No social media, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t look at the newspapers.

The headlines shocked her, a wash of black and white in both the red tops and the so-called quality press. She had been here before, but, at ten, she’d been too young to pay much attention, too sheltered from the news reports to care what they said about her.