I needn’t have worried about dressing up or down for our date because Rebecca hadn’t made much of an effort. I was more than a little disappointed but she is still a beauty and more importantly she is my beauty. Her hair was sticking to her head, shorn like a sheep’s. I put it down to trauma and decided that I would plan her wardrobe and hairstyles in the future.

‘Will you marry me, Rebecca?’

Her reaction wasn’t quite as planned. She dropped a bowl of peanuts all over the floor and, most irritatingly, seemed to find the task of clearing up more important than my question.

‘Rebecca, will you marry me?’ I repeated.

I heard her retch into the toilet bowl and wondered what she might have eaten. I must say the well-honed image which I carried round in my head of my beloved was a little askew. I tried to open the bathroom door but it was bolted from the inside. Locked doors will be taboo when we are married. I jiggled the handle up and down.

‘I’ll not be long,’ she shouted through the barrier.

For at least ten minutes I waited outside, standing perfectly still, until she reappeared. She jumped right into my arms.

Rebecca would always have agreed to marry me as fate had ordained. Any initial doubts she might have harboured were soon scuppered when I assured her that our betrothal would negate the jealousy motive for murder which Amber had so carelessly tossed in the direction of the police.

Rebecca leant against my shoulder, craving my protection. At last the wait was over and together we would conquer the world. She was mine forever.

‘I love you, Rebecca Carrington.’

84

Rebecca

I spent half an hour searching for my pink baseball cap. It had to be the pink one, bright and unmistakable and as I scrabbled under the bed, at the back of cupboards, I panicked that I mightn’t be able to find it.

The light blue hoodie, which I always wore when I jogged in the park, had been washed and I laid it out alongside the navy jogging bottoms. My red and white trainers were a size five; the right size. The outfit I had chosen was the most distinctive I could come up with.

I prepared a full English breakfast for Jodi and Taylor who arrived, as agreed, promptly at seven. The certainty that Arthur was a creature of habit made me confident that this was early enough.