Let her go… Because that girl has got to die so that you may live.

It didn’t seem right that this should be the place to find out she was going to die.

She emerged between the dunes onto a wide expanse of sand that seemed to stretch endlessly to either side of her: the grey of the sand melded seamlessly into the sea and sky, so that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. The wind hit her with such force, it felt like a living thing. There was nothing between her and Norway.

She had a moment of clarity, sharp and hard, that pierced the fogginess of her thinking: this is what it’s going to be like from now on. I will live in fear of every man, of every stray sound, of every footstep in the dark, of every shadow in the night.

His voice reminded her of Christmas: of old movies and cigar smoke, of sweet sherry in cut-glass tumblers and the crackle of a real log fire.

He would do his best, but his best would not be good enough. It would never be good enough to repair the hole that would open in her child’s heart.

What’s going to happen when they find out what they’re really like? And they have to spend the rest of their lives married to each other?

I sure as hell don’t want to be dragged round a mansion by an over-excited single parent downloading bollocks about the Victorians on 4G.

I go downstairs to my bedroom and get out my diary from where I’ve hidden it in the wardrobe under my jumpers. I write, ‘My mother has a secret.