I had told myself – and I would have told Uncle Jack if he had asked me – that what I carried in my bag was purely for personal protection, an insurance policy against rape, murder and being tossed naked into the street. Because I knew he would want to touch me. But I had made up my mind. I had to make him understand that I had a life and there was no space in it for him or anyone else. He turned as I entered the room, his bathrobe flapping open, one hand on himself and the other pressing a button by the door.

The red Do Not Disturb light came on.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

And he laughed in my face because he had heard it all before from lots of other women in many rooms just like this one. ‘No? You’re telling me no now?’

‘You have to leave me alone,’ I said. ‘I want my life back.’

But he was in total control.

‘You want your life back? Ah. You want your life back. But your life is mine now, Tara. You don’t have any other life.’ He reached out and squeezed a nipple, hard enough to make me cry out in pain. ‘And it’s not over until I say it’s over.’

I was still gasping with pain as he turned away.

‘Now I’m going to take a shower and when I come back I want to find you out of those stupid clothes and down on your knees—’

And then the nailing hammer was out of my bag and it was in my right hand as I struck James Caine in the back of the head. My aim was wild and he was walking away from me but the head of the nailing hammer still cleaved through the back of his skull with surprising ease and he stumbled forward, blocking his fall with the coffee table. A complimentary fruit bowl went flying. He stared up at me with disbelief, his hand touching the back of his head and coming away covered in blood.

‘Whore,’ he said, slowly rising to his feet.

And so I hit him again.

I flew home. Not to my home in Camden Town where Christian and Marlon were waiting for me but to my first home, the home where I had been a child, the forever home where I had grown up. From the cars on the drive I could tell that my parents were home but it was a big house where a family could easily avoid each other and I went out to Half Acre Field without having to see them, to talk to them, to lie to them. There was no sign of Uncle Jack up at the stable. But the incinerator bin was still burning. I took off my long green Prada raincoat and threw it into the bin. Then I threw in the Tokyo Giants baseball cap. I felt a sudden blast of hot breath by my side and gasped with fear.