“I’d got as far as the kitchen when I heard a car draw up outside. It sounded like Bantock’s. The creaking of the garage door confirmed my guess. I was about to run for it before he came in when I suddenly realized how disastrous that would be. If he saw me, he’d recognize me. Even if he didn’t see me, he’d tell the police I’d called there on an unconvincing pretext earlier in the day. And my rucksack was on the other side of the hedge. If I left it there, there’d be no doubt of my guilt. What little I knew of forensics suggested that if they had cause to suspect me, they’d be able to prove I’d been there that night. A fingerprint. A fibre. A hair. God knows what. But they’d find it. And I’d be done for. Whereas if they had no cause to suspect me… if they had no reason even to think of me…

“I dodged into the studio and cut off another length of wire. I was planning to pounce on Bantock as he went through the kitchen. But when he opened the back door, shouted ‘Louise?’ and got no answer, he stopped, then turned towards the studio, almost as if he sensed my presence there. I shrank back behind the door and, as he came in, leapt at his back, looping the wire over his head and tightening it around his neck in one movement. He yielded as I pulled, then fought back, hurling himself forward in an attempt to throw me off. We crashed to the floor and rolled over several times. I could hear and feel objects tumbling around us. He was a big strong man, but overweight and out of condition. I had the advantage of youth and determination. I couldn’t afford to let him get the better of me. I forced him onto his stomach, managed to pin his arms with my knees and twisted at the wire in a frenzy. And that was how he died, a choking clawing heap on the floor of his studio, his face smeared with a fine multi-coloured dust formed of tiny flakes of paint shed over the years from his brushes and palettes.

“I struggled to my feet and tried to think clearly. With Bantock dead, there was nobody to connect me with what had happened. I was supposed to be abroad and, if I could get back to France without being seen by anybody who knew me, I was almost certainly safe from detection. The instinct for self-preservation erased the horror of what I’d done, at least for a while. I pocketed the coil of wire and the pliers, kept the gloves on and rushed out into the lane. There was nobody about. I was safe if I kept my nerve. I ran up the lane to the common and worked my way round to the beech tree where I’d left the rucksack. I took out my torch and checked the ground for things I might have dropped, gathered up the empty lager tins and stuffed them into the rucksack, then stumbled down across the field towards the road into Kington, navigating by the lights in the houses along Butterbur Lane.

“Once I was on the road, I reckoned I looked like any other hiker. I walked straight through the town, restraining my pace all the way, resisting the urge to break into a run, and out to the bypass. Then I started trying to hitch a lift. My luck was in. A lorry driver stopped for me after only a few minutes. He was heading for Coventry. Well, anywhere as long as it was far from Kington suited me. He dropped me at a motorway service area between Birmingham and Coventry in the small hours of the following morning. I managed to pick up another lift from there down to London. By the time the bodies were found at Whistler’s Cot, I was on a ferry halfway across the Channel.

“I spent most of the next week drifting down through Germany, Austria and the Balkans, buying day-old English newspapers at every stop in search of information about what line the police were following, what clues they’d found at the scene. The panic attacks lessened. The fear of imminent arrest ebbed away. Then came creeping revulsion at what I’d done. An inability to believe I’d done it so strong I started quite genuinely to doubt I had. My geographical remoteness from the crime became a psychological remoteness as well. My memory told me what had happened, but my conscience refused to accept it. It was partly a survival mechanism, I suppose. A way of coping with the guilt. A method of evading responsibility for my actions. It was Louise’s fault for provoking me beyond endurance. Bantock’s for barging in when he did. Naylor’s for grabbing and soiling what I’d not been allowed to touch. Anybody’s fault. Except mine.

“I still didn’t know who Naylor was then, of course. When I read of his arrest, I was briefly tempted to go to the nearest British Consulate and turn myself in. Then I thought I’d wait to see if he was charged. When he was-with rape as well as murder-I realized exactly who he must be and why the police were bound to think they’d found the culprit. I was in the clear. And suddenly it seemed not merely a matter of luck but of fate. Destiny had decreed I shouldn’t be punished and Naylor should. Who was I to argue? It was only fair, after all. It was only as it should be. I hadn’t known what I was doing. I’d lost control. In France, they’d have dismissed it as a crime of passion, an understandable and pardonable surrender to anger and jealousy. As for Naylor, well, there was an ironic form of justice in the likelihood that he’d suffer for what I’d done. Because he’d goaded me into doing it in the first place.

“So I told myself, anyway. It sounds contemptible, I know. It is contemptible. But you don’t know what excuses and justifications the mind is capable of until you find yourself in such an extreme situation. Louise was dead. So was Bantock. I couldn’t bring them back to life by confessing to their murders. And Naylor was nothing to me. He was nothing compared with me. I had a successful and worthwhile life ahead of me. I had the chance to redeem myself by hard work and respectability. Whereas he was just some sordid nonentity who’d be as happy in a prison cell as he would be on the streets. Sacrificing myself to save him would be a pointless waste. It would only make matters worse than they already were. I had endless conversations with myself on the subject, turning it round and round like a debating point. I even convinced myself Louise would have forgiven me and urged me not to confess. I saw her occasionally in my dreams. Even more beautiful than the reality had been. So serene. So understanding. And I kept hearing her voice. Speaking the words she’d used that afternoon in Holland Park. ‘Let’s forget this ever happened. Let’s write it off as an unfortunate misunderstanding.’ In the end, it seemed to be her will I was yielding to, her last wish I was respecting. I’d murdered her, yes. But by letting Naylor take the blame, I was protecting her reputation. She could be remembered as a faithful wife and a devoted mother. So long as I held my tongue.

“I got home in late August, sure by then that nothing could implicate me in the murders and that my conscience, though it could never be clear, was at least secure. I wrote a letter of condolence to Sarah and got a polite but guarded reply. I decided to leave it at that. Our paths had divided and I was confident they’d never cross again. I went back to Cambridge in October determined to start my life over again. To re-create myself and in the process cast aside forever the memory of the things I’d done that night at Whistler’s Cot.

“I succeeded. I made new friends and threw myself into new activities. By the time the trial started, I was beyond its reach, so safe in my busy self-regarding world that I didn’t even read the newspaper reports of its progress. It was only thanks to another student who’d known Sarah that I learnt of Naylor’s conviction. And do you know what I felt when I heard the sentence? Relieved. That’s what. Just relieved it was over. Just glad he was going to be locked away for twenty years. Just happy to know I could forget all about him.

“But I couldn’t, could I? Not as it turned out. Because after graduation I toyed with several job offers, thinking one wasn’t much different from another, and accepted a post with Metropolitan Mutual Insurance. A fatal mistake, I suppose you could say. Because it meant moving to Bristol. Where Sarah had gone to take her articles. And Rowena had also gone, to study mathematics. I didn’t know they were living there, of course. I had absolutely no idea. Until the day I bumped into Sarah in Park Street.