But now, even though she wasn’t publicly identified, reading about herself, her crime distilled into a tempting soundbite for a hungry public, and knowing these newspapers would be on sale in supermarkets and garage forecourts and newsagents across the country, made bile rise in her throat. She ran to the toilet, her body expelling its meagre breakfast.

When she had stopped trembling, she rinsed her mouth and returned to the computer, scrolling through each newspaper in turn.

Most of the stories were a rehash of the previous day’s events: the closing of the loophole in the injunction to prevent the Scottish press from identifying her and Honor; a weak statement from the Justice Secretary; an aerial photograph of the media scrum outside her house, the street sign pixelated, although still recognizable to those who lived or worked in Coggsbridge; some quotes from the mother of a boy at Honor’s school who she’d met once, although Sweetwood hadn’t been named; and an interview with their old nemesis Danielle, who had crawled out of the woodwork to cash in on their tragedy.

A headline and photograph in one of the tabloids caught her eye – MY FRIEND, THE ANGEL OF DEATH – but it was the byline that made her sit up and breathe out her shock into the empty hotel room.

EXCLUSIVE by Brinley Booth.

Brinley Booth.

A memory of childhood rose lightly inside her. A warm day – the summers had seemed so impossibly long – and their skirts tucked into their knickers, paddling in the river. Brinley’s mother had packed them a picnic of cheese sandwiches, ripe peaches, slabs of bittersweet lemon cake and cartons of juice. Shannon, Brinley and her. The Three Musketeers.

Because so much time had lapsed since the murders with no word of her former playmate, she’d always assumed that Brinley had kicked over the traces of the past and moved on, as she had tried to do. Unlike Catherine, Brinley had been protected by the courts, the judge imposing reporting restrictions that meant her evidence, as a witness for the prosecution, could be printed in the newspapers, but her name could not. But this. This was too much. What kind of a perverse game was her old friend playing?

In spite of herself, Catherine devoured every paragraph of the feature, the knocking of her heart echoing in all her empty spaces. Then she read it again, more slowly this time, savouring its lack of sensationalism, lingering over the final lines.

Sara Carter might be a convicted killer. She might have stabbed her abusive parents with a pair of scissors fourteen times when she was ten years old. But there are two sides to the story, two faces of the same coin. She was my childhood friend, my playmate. Even after all these years, I’d still trust her with my life. She spared mine, after all.