As night closed in, the room darkened. The silence became a physical pain. Catherine sat on the edge of someone else’s sofa and shivered until it consumed her. But there was no one to make her a cup of tea or fetch a blanket, and eventually she levered herself up, hands like ice. She warmed herself a tin of soup in someone else’s kitchen and climbed into someone else’s bed, palms cupped around someone else’s mug. She closed her eyes, caught the screech of an owl at hunt. She was alone again. But she had been here before. She would survive, because what other choice was there?

A headache was needling the bridge of her nose and she reached across the bedside table for her handbag, in search of paracetamol.

Throat sweets and loose coins and plasters and a packet of tissues. A biro and Tampax, an old shopping list. Painkillers. A forgotten bundle of letters and business cards, their edges torn from being in her bag since yesterday, held together by an elastic band.

Letters from the Daily Telegraph, the Sun, Daily Mirror, The Times, Daily Mail, Sunday Times, Press Association, Sky News, BBC, ITN, Channel 4.

They were all clamouring to speak to her, an exclusive with the Angel of Death who stabbed her parents to death in a frenzy of bloodlust. None of them would want to hear the inconvenient truth, much less publish it. Who would believe her, Sara Carter, convicted killer, with all the evidence to the contrary?

She scanned the letters, all variations on the same theme. Your side of the story. Reunited with your sister. Donation to a charity of your choice.

She had almost given up hope, resigned to the collapse of her family, until she saw, on the bottom of one of the last letters, as if the hand of fate itself was guiding her, a name she knew as well as her own.

58

‘There’s nothing more I can do. You can try and persuade Barbara to pose for a photograph outside your house. It’s a big ask, I suppose, but it’s worked in the past.’

The senior communications officer, Romily Dawson, was all clipped efficiency. There was none of the previous warmth or affectionate exasperation of the last few days.

‘I’ve always thought there’s a dignity in resigning quickly, though, don’t you? Party before political career, and all that,’ she said.

Geoffrey Heathcote gripped the telephone receiver more tightly. He knew whose voice was behind that sentiment and it wasn’t Romily Dawson’s. The Prime Minister liked neat and tidy. He was a loose end.