The Golden Rule

by Amanda Craig

Genres: General Fiction; Marriage & Divorce; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction; Domestic Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021

A Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Daily Mail and Financial Times Best Book of 2020 Pick

'A highly enjoyable story about female resilience and finding fulfilment on your own terms' Sunday Times

'An irresistible summer read' Guardian Book of the Day

'A typically sharp and hugely satisfying page-turner' Daily Mail

She's such a skilful storyteller' Bernardine Evaristo

When Hannah is invited into the First-Class carriage of the London to Penzance train by Jinni, she walks into a spider's web. Now a poor young single mother, Hannah once escaped Cornwall to go to university. But once she married Jake and had his child, her dreams were crushed into bitter disillusion. Her husband has left her for Eve, rich and childless, and Hannah has been surviving by becoming a cleaner in London. Jinni is equally angry and bitter, and in the course of their journey the two women agree to murder each other's husbands. After all, they are strangers on a train - who could possibly connect them?

But when Hannah goes to Jinni's husband's home the next night, she finds Stan, a huge, hairy, ugly drunk who has his own problems - not least the care of a half-ruined house and garden. He claims Jinni is a very different person to the one who has persuaded Hannah to commit a terrible crime. Who is telling the truth - and who is the real victim?

Praise for Amanda Craig

'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' India Knight
'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' Sarah Perry
'Amanda Craig is one of the most brilliant and entertaining novelists now working in Britain' Alison Lurie

Release date: July 2, 2020

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

By the time Hannah caught the train to Cornwall, she could have killed her husband.

It was one of those evenings in summer when everything seems to be suspended between frustration and release. The dash to Paddington Station in the rush hour, the airless tunnels, the fear of being too late to get to the platform in time had all made it feel like an endless nightmare that began even before her journey started.

‘I can’t take Maisy,’ Jake announced, earlier that day. ‘I’m busy.’

‘You know it’s your turn to look after her.’

‘I can’t change my plans now. Take her with you.’

‘You know why this is an emergency. I sent you the booking reference for my train. I can’t cancel, and I can’t bring her.’

‘Find someone else to look after her,’ he said.

Hannah counted to five before answering. ‘There’s nobody I can ask.’

‘Of course there is. You need to move on, Hannah.’

All the advice is to be calm and reasonable in a divorce. Only it is very hard to keep calm and reasonable while a marriage goes rancid. Lies, evasions, insults and bullying were bad enough. Getting the father of her child to pay for anything was worse. It was a common technique among husbands who wanted to move on themselves: it was called starving a woman out.

At almost thirty, Hannah was exhausted by debt, hopelessness, loneliness, anger and the knowledge that, despite having jumped through all the right hoops, the bigger life on which she had pinned her hopes was not going to happen. The sensation of failure was worse than hunger, and almost indistinguishable from it. They had lived apart for nearly two years, and he had recently applied to divorce her. He was also threatening to take Maisy away. She didn’t know if he could do this. She had no money to fight it, if need be.

Fury was what kept her going, like sugar or strong liquor; it got her running along the platform at Paddington seconds before the whistle blew and her ticket became invalid. Afterwards, she wondered what would have been averted had she missed her train.

The carriage was crammed. Hannah, panting and sweating, couldn’t even push her way to a seat. The air conditioning had broken down, as it so often did in a heatwave, and the stench made her head swim.

Meanwhile, Jake was with his mistress, on his third foreign holiday of the year.

‘You’d like her if you knew her,’ he’d said.

Hannah had never met Eve. She discovered her existence by accident when Jake left his iPad behind for their three-year-old daughter, to play on while he went out to the gym.

‘Mummy, why does Daddy have a friend with no face?’

‘What’s that, sweetie?’

Hannah removed the tablet from her child’s grasp and saw her husband’s Facebook page. At first, she smiled at the pictures he had put up, mostly of himself and Maisy, but one or two of her, too, before the badger-stripe of dark hair grew back between the highlights. She herself did not use social media any more. What did she have to say about herself or her life that would be of any interest to anyone else? Then, she saw that he also had Facebook Messenger. In a few minutes, his nine-month relationship with a woman called Eve was revealed. Her rival’s own marital status (‘it’s complicated’) was there, and that she lived in London. Everything else – friends, family, education, profession, hobbies, photographs, email and surname – was a mystery. Eve’s icon was a blank, the standard white silhouette of a head with bobbed hair, generically female. In many ways, this ignorance was the most terrible aspect of all, for it left Hannah to imagine someone who was her opposite: tall, confident, beautiful and rich. Scrolling back, it became clear that all the weekends when Jake was supposedly away working had been spent in five-star hotels in Paris, New York, Venice and Rome. While Hannah had budgeted and saved for the modest flat of their own that everyone under thirty dreamt of getting, Jake had been spending his money and time with another woman.

Confronted, he refused to tell her more.

‘What’s the point? Eve and I are together.’

‘Why did you lie about our marriage being dead?’

‘It is dead. It’s been dead for years.’

‘It isn’t dead!’ Hannah almost screamed. ‘We still have sex, or do you not tell her that?’

This was true, although the last time had been several months ago. She had been desperate, as usual, to sleep before Maisy woke again, and sighed with relief after it was over.

‘We’ve never been right for each other. Face it, we’re too different.’

Hannah thought she would die of grief and humiliation, but one kind of pain was followed by another, even more sordid. Divorce may start with the failure of love, but in the end, it is always about money.

‘My card has just been declined in the supermarket,’ she said, ringing him from the till.

‘I cancelled it.’

‘You what?’ She could hardly breathe. ‘Do you think that your child and I can suddenly live on nothing?’

‘You’re a grown-up; go back to work.’

‘We both agreed that I should look after Maisy until she started school.’

‘Think again.’

Back and forth he went, like a cat with a mouse, spending some nights with Eve and some with her. Hannah had pains in her chest, no resistance against infections, and almost no certainty that she even knew who she was. Jake, whose love had once made her feel like a goddess, now made her the lowest creature on the earth.

Why had it taken her so long to see him for what he was? He hadn’t always been vile, was one answer. They had once been each other’s best friend and support, just as they had once found each other irresistibly attractive and exciting. But while she had gone on adoring him, he had become increasingly critical and dismissive. ‘Your face makes you look more intelligent than you are,’ he had told her (as if anyone, least of all he, could quantify such a thing). They were from very different backgrounds, and although he had claimed to admire hers, it was increasingly evident that he found her lack of connections irksome, especially after she gave up her job when Maisy was a year old to become a full-time mother. It had been a drip-drip-drip, and for years she had excused his remarks as being due to stress. Then it was her own fault for making him angry, and she would do anything to win back his affection, pleading with what he called her ‘puppy eyes’ and bursting into tears. He became brusque, no longer doing anything to help domestically, leaving her alone while he went out drinking with colleagues or away on what he claimed were training weekends. Once, he had been so furious with her for not being able to quieten Maisy that he had thrown a red-hot baked potato, straight out of the microwave, at her face. Her cheek was burnt, badly enough for her to spend the next three hours with half her face in a basin of cool water, trying to reduce the heat while awkwardly cradling their child. He had apologised after this, claiming it had been a second’s loss of temper, a crazy impulse. She still had a small white scar from it.

Hannah had nobody to turn to. Being the first in her group of peers to have a child at just twenty-four isolated her even more effectively than his unpredictable temper. She was ashamed of her own family and intimidated by his; when pregnant, she had not bonded with anyone at the NCT classes, finding them patronising and much older than herself. (When she wheeled her daughter round in a buggy, she was always taken to be the nanny.) Almost none of her former friends had stayed in touch; why would they, when she was both desperately boring and boringly desperate? Her energies had been fully occupied by looking after their daughter and running the household on one person’s income instead of two. One night when he was with Eve, she felt such despair that she considered jumping from the balcony of the flat to end her life. She came to her senses in time, and when Jake returned, she had all his things packed.

‘Give me your keys,’ she said, and in a moment of shame, he did.

Hannah then had to try to feed Maisy and herself on £20.70 a week, or £2.95 a day, this being child benefit, which took eight weeks to come in because by now Jake was earning well over the £50,000-a-year limit. He still wanted Maisy, as lovely as only a child with milk-teeth can be, but he did not understand that she was not a fridge-light. Feeding, clothing, washing, housing, entertaining, teaching and comforting a new person brought into this world continues even when you are not there to see it. Hannah could make meals out of vegetables, eggs, milk and bread, but they had no meat and very little cheese or fruit. She had to pay the council tax, the utilities and every other urgent yet incidental expense, and could do so only by first using up her savings and then getting into debt on her credit card.

At first her situation did not seem so unusual. Most graduates like herself had heaved furniture, waited tables, tutored tots and swallowed anger just to survive. They had grown up in the golden years of national optimism, when going to university was just the first step to a glorious new future in which every problem, from world hunger to global warming, would be solved; instead, they had come to adulthood with economic catastrophe, increasingly deranged world leaders and a sense of impending doom. The personal was political and the political personal, in an existence where the only certainty was debt for degrees that gave no obvious advantage. The older generations (who had experienced nothing but luck) mocked them for being anxious, depressed and vulnerable; those who could not or would not live with their parents rented flats where mould and mice were as commonplace as multiple occupancy.

When Jake and Hannah first rented their flat, they had been young graduate professionals with a starting salary of £21,000 a year each, which meant they could easily cover the cost. These days, she was terrified her landlord would discover that she now claimed benefits and throw her out.

Unlike the wives of rich men, she could not force her husband to give her alimony once they were divorced. A month after Jake left, Hannah had learnt to her horror that although it was possible that she might get some small settlement for Maisy, she herself would be left wholly exposed to poverty, otherwise known as benefits. It might help her case to consult a lawyer, but to do this even once cost £500, a sum that might as well have been ten times as much. To those who have shall be given: but to those who have not shall be taken away. In other words, In order to get money in a divorce, you must already have some.

Jake was adamant that he would not give her anything other than maintenance for Maisy.

‘Stop leeching and get off your arse. You’re bleeding me dry.’

‘How can I be when you barely even pay the rent?’

It was as if two tectonic plates, his personality and hers, were pushing and grinding against each other. What seemed to be fixed for ever was suddenly heaved up or torn apart, a river of water turned to boiling lava. He began jabbing at her with his finger when he spoke to her, and the jabs turned to shakings and then to arm-twisting and pushing, though nothing frightened her as much as when he put his face an inch away from hers and shouted. She was terrified, and only her stubborn anger prevented her from collapsing into despair. She could not sleep or eat or read. The tiny amount of energy she had left over from keeping her child and herself alive went into loving her daughter, which she did with an intensity that was almost like religious zeal.

Leaning against the wall of the packed train Hannah thought about what it would be like to have a real holiday, somewhere hot but cooled by sea breezes or shaded by pine trees. Her journey down to Cornwall was not, however, for leisure. Her mother was dying. It had been happening over months, with stops and starts and hopes of remission because Holly was only sixty. Now there was no time left, according to her mother’s sister, Loveday.

‘If you want to say goodbye, come now, dear heart. She won’t last another twenty-four hours.’

A hugely expensive ticket (£280) was bought immediately on her credit card. To bring Maisy too would only add to the cost and the strain. She had to remain in London. Hannah had wept and pleaded with Jake; he had been adamant. It was his weekend to look after her, but he was busy and he could not change his plans with Eve. She was even desperate enough to ask her mother-in-law for help, but Etta was away on holiday herself and couldn’t step in. Hannah’s one remaining friend from university, Naz, was too high-powered to even contemplate asking. In the end, she had turned to the single other person whom she might ask: her neighbour Lila. Lila’s daughter Bella was Maisy’s best friend at school, and the two mothers often collected each other’s children.

‘Course I’ll take her, if she don’t mind sleeping on the sofa,’ Lila said. ‘We’ll spend most of the day in the park, it’s so hot.’

‘It’s just that I must see my mum before . . . you know.’

‘I understand.’

It wasn’t free, though – it couldn’t be, because Lila was also poor. Hannah gave her neighbour £10 to cover Maisy’s food, and that was all she had spare. She had forgotten to refill her plastic bottle, and without the money to buy water, licked her parched lips. A man trod heavily on her foot, for which she apologised. The thought of standing like this for hour after hour, the stench of the toilets, sour breath and unwashed bodies brought a new level of misery.

I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, the train repeated. I wish you were dead.

The sliding glass door between carriages sprang open whenever anyone triggered the sensor. On the other side was First Class. There, every seat was as wide as an elephant, and the air conditioning worked perfectly.

Just one person sat inside: a woman, wearing a sleeveless green linen dress that framed her slim form as the dark hair did her pale face. A gauzy scarf was draped across her shoulders, rippling with every shade from emerald to malachite. From each ear hung a single large pear-shaped pearl and on one arm was a heavy platinum cuff whose rich gleam circled her wrist like a weapon. Before her were several small bottles of mineral water, and an iPad inside a green leather case. She was watching something on it.

The door snapped shut again, but Hannah went on gazing. Someone so elegant seemed to belong to a different species, not just a different class. What would it be like to have her life? All at once the woman in First looked up. Their eyes met, and after a moment, the woman smiled, her red lips curving, her dark eyes warm.

Hannah turned instinctively to see who was behind her, but nobody else was facing in the same direction. Puzzled, she turned back; this time the woman beckoned.

Even then, she might not have dared to step forward, but the train gave a sudden jolt and she fell against the door.

It opened, and Hannah stumbled through.

Chilled air washed around her. The relief was so delicious that she wanted to stand there, her flesh turning from liquid to solid.

‘Hello,’ the woman said. Her voice was soft and gentle.

‘Do I know you?’ Hannah asked.

‘No, but I thought I’d invite you in.’

Hannah sighed. ‘I don’t have a first-class ticket.’

The woman smiled. ‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘If I’m found here by a ticket inspector, it will.’

‘I’ve got a spare. My companion couldn’t come.’

One rectangle of orange and cream card appeared between long, white fingers like a conjuring trick.

‘Take it,’ the woman said. ‘It’ll only be wasted otherwise. I’m going as far as Fol. You?’

‘St Piran.’ Hannah looked around the empty carriage. ‘I’ll sit somewhere else?’

The woman shrugged. ‘Be my guest. Water? It’s free in First.’

‘Oh yes, yes please.’

She drank a whole bottle, gasping.

‘I’m Jinni.’

She looked as if she had materialised out of one of the bottles before her, and might turn back into green vapour.

‘Hannah. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Holiday?’

‘No.’

She twisted her wedding ring on her finger, conscious of her uneven nails. Jinni held up her own manicured hand. There was a plain platinum band, also loose.

‘Is your husband . . . ?’

‘A shit.’ A concentration of venom changed Jinni’s face like a convulsion. ‘I’m travelling down to collect some stuff. You?’

Those in the grip of misery and fury long to unburden themselves: this is the secret of every organisation from the Church to social media. Hannah knew, however, that the woes of others are entertainment, especially where a marriage is concerned.

In the past few years, she had learnt that however sympathetic people seem, all the questions concerning a marital breakdown are about how you must be the author of your own misfortunes, especially if you were a woman. Even if she were to tell her mother’s family, she knew the response would be the same: ‘But surely you must have realised – suspected – understood . . . ’ Conversations with former friends and colleagues all went along the same lines. It was like having the nail that covered the soft, exquisitely tender part of a finger ripped off, again and again, until the nail itself will never grow back properly.

But someone else who is going through the same torment is another matter.

‘Me too,’ she said.

Jinni told her story first. Her husband, Con, was a violent bully and a miser. They had no children. Hannah mentioned hers.

‘Clever of you to get a baby out of him.’

‘I wasn’t trying,’ Hannah said. ‘It just happened.’

‘All the same, you’ll get more money in the end because of her. I’ll get practically nothing.’

‘I don’t think I’ll get much either. He just wants rid of me.’

‘Isn’t it strange the way all women in our situation are alike?’ Jinni said.

Like, yet unlike – because Jinni clearly still had money. She could afford both the First-Class ticket and, presumably, a lawyer.

‘I suppose so,’ Hannah said.

‘Five hours! You could get to a real place in that time,’ Jinni said. ‘Luckily, I’ve brought wine.’

She opened her capacious leather bag, took out a bottle in a silver jacket and felt it.

‘Still chilled.’ She filled two of the plastic cups on their table. ‘Go on, there’s nothing else to do.’

Hannah hadn’t drunk alcohol for years. The first sip was delicious and slightly fizzy.

‘Nice, isn’t it? Have some more.’

Being strangers in this cool bubble of space, moving rapidly through a familiar landscape without anyone else to see or hear them, encouraged a sense of recklessness.

They swapped stories of their husbands’ unkindness, leaning towards each other across the table as if over a campfire, warmed by the wickedness of men. The more they exchanged, the more their anger swelled. Like Hannah, Jinni had been physically assaulted on several occasions – she did not go into details. Yet for Hannah, it was the financial worry that hurt most.

‘Even running the washing machine is a problem,’ she confessed. ‘I have to do everything by hand, including sheets.’

‘How appallingly tedious for you.’

It was worse than tedious, but Jinni would never have to grapple with drudgery. Hannah looked at her companion with a mixture of fascination, envy and sympathy. Jinni was, she guessed, a few years older than herself, although Hannah didn’t want to pry.

‘It’s a long journey, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘We don’t have to talk if you’d rather not.’

‘No, I always find it a drag.’ Jinni gave another dazzling smile. ‘I hate leaving London, but especially to see him.’

It became clear that she, or rather her husband, must have a second home in Fol, the town where the rich moored their yachts and the second-homeowners spent their summers. Hannah was well acquainted with it because ever since she was old enough to hold a Dyson, she’d earned money cleaning their houses. Fol was all that St Piran was not, wired up with the latest technology, 4×4 cars, pretty shops and Waitrose deliveries. In this Cornwall, everything was lovely apart from the Cornish. Hannah had grown up hearing her friends and family described as ‘those ghastly people’.

The Cornish were used to being called odd and worse than odd. Stuck out into the Atlantic like the bunioned foot of Britain, cut off by the Tamar, with a language and superstitions of their own, they were halfway to Elfland even without the legends bowdlerised by tourism. To Hannah, it mostly came down to this: her mother couldn’t afford to feed her all the protein that made Jake and his kind grow tall.

She sighed and leant back in the wide grey seat.

‘If I could always travel like this, I don’t think my marriage would matter. Or not so much.’

‘Money does take the edge off some things, yes. But the rest is the same.’

Hannah nodded in sympathy. She couldn’t imagine what kind of man would make a woman as charming as this suffer, but in suffering everyone becomes equal.

‘It’s such a dreadful feeling, isn’t it? You feel ashamed, even if you’re not the one committing adultery. I wonder how he can live with himself. Or how she can, for that matter.’

‘Do you know her name?’

‘Only that she’s called Eve. Nothing else. Do you hate the other woman?’

‘Yes,’ said Jinni, almost absently. ‘Though not as much as I hate Con.’

They slipped past small towns, a canal, field after field. Oxeye daisies and cow parsley lined the track, billowing in the wind. The whole countryside was frothing, like milk coming to the boil. Not so long ago, it had taken a decision that filled city people with shock and horror; they were still travelling towards its consequences. Hannah dreaded seeing her relations, not just for the usual reasons, but because of this. She had never felt more alienated from them. It was yet another reason why she could not go back to live in Cornwall.

On, on, rattling away from London. Soon, the windows filled with wriggling rivers where white swans glided, and steep hills plunged, shaggy with woodland. They finished the wine. Hannah’s head began to swim as the alcohol reached her empty stomach. Every beat of the train carried her closer to her mother, whom she both longed for and dreaded seeing one last time. She began to believe that if she could stay on this train, Holly would still be alive. Her mind was always playing tricks like this on her, caught between hope and fear.

‘I can’t bear being with Con,’ her companion said, staring out of the window. ‘He’s so controlling.’

Hannah dropped her gaze to Jinni’s arms, toned and flawlessly smooth. Unlike her neighbour Lila, she had no scars or burns. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything, because neither did Hannah, unless you saw her cheek.

‘Why do men do that?’

‘He treats me like trash because I can’t give him kids. I had cancer, you see.’

Hannah was appalled. ‘I’m so sorry. That’s terrible – to blame you for something that’s not your fault.’

‘I hate him. My divorce is taking for ever. I wish he were dead. So much simpler, to be a widow.’

Hannah felt a violent lurch, as if the train had suddenly switched tracks.

‘Yes. I think every woman in our situation feels that.’

‘I’d kill mine if I thought I could get away with it. Wouldn’t you?’

Hannah gave an ironic laugh.

‘Yes. Probably.’

Jinni sighed. ‘It’s such a relief to say it, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve thought about it,’ Hannah said. The words almost burst out of her. ‘Over and over and over. It’s almost the only thing I think about, some days.’

All at once, the train thundered into the first of the series of tunnels before Exeter. The air became brick, and the noise deafening. Their reflections shone dimly in the black glass, a parallel world of darkness and shadow.

Jinni leant forward, her eyes bright, and mouthed, ‘Why don’t we, then?’

Hannah grimaced. The noise and the wine made her feel reckless. She said, half-joking, ‘Because as his wife, I’d be the first suspect.’

‘Not if we swapped places.’

Hannah stared. ‘They’d find out.’

Jinni’s voice was barely audible over the noise of the train.

‘You and I have just met, by chance, on this train.’

They shot out of the tunnel, and the turbulence ceased. Hannah said, uneasily, ‘I think I know this story. It was a book, wasn’t it? Or a film. It doesn’t end well.’

‘There are only seven stories in the world, don’t they say?’ Jinni said. Hannah suppressed a flash of irritation. People who didn’t love reading always said this, in an attempt to reduce fiction to a formula. It was even stupider than thinking all life was just the genetic code. ‘But the difference is that they were men. Nobody believes that women can do anything.’

‘Isn’t that a flaw too?’

‘No. Nothing but this journey connects us.’

‘But we’re always being watched, somewhere, somehow.’

‘Not on this train.’

Hannah found herself looking round, to check for the Recording Angel of modern life – and it was true, there was no CCTV. The commuters crowding the carriage had got off long before, and no ticket collector had been through. They were, as Jinni said, unobserved. All at once a sensation of vertiginous possibilities opened in her mind. To be free of Jake, his bullying, his meanness, his continual belittling of her . . . All she’d ever had was her intelligence, and he’d been determined to deny even that.

Jinni’s face was alight with passion, or possibly wine.

‘We’re getting off at different stops. You bought a ticket, Second Class, when?’

‘Today.’

‘I bought mine yesterday.’

By now, the train was rushing for the county border, the land disappearing into a river that became a wide estuary bobbing with boats. The sea at Exmouth flexed and reflexed. Hannah could hear her voice slurring slightly.

‘A woman can’t disable a man. They are always stronger than us. Physically.’

‘You can if you have a Taser,’ Jinni said.

Hannah gazed at her, round-eyed. ‘Do you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Aren’t they illegal?’

‘So? What men do to women is illegal, and they get away with it. They know they can kill us, and we fear them because of it. This just makes us . . . a little more equal.’

Jinni opened her bag and took out a shocking-pink device. It looked like a ladies’ electric razor. Hannah eyed it dubiously. A part of her wanted to giggle, and another part was impressed.

‘Have you tried it out?’

‘You just point and press. It delivers a kick that will knock out anyone, up to fifteen metres away.’

‘How did you get it?’

Jinni smiled. ‘You can buy anything on the Dark Web. Take it.’

The Taser was in her grasp before she had even thought about it. The sober part of Hannah’s mind told her that she was being impulsive, even crazy, but it also told her that her companion was giving her something that might be useful.

‘Write down my husband’s address: Con Coad, Endpoint. I’ll write down Jake’s,’ Jinni said.

Hannah flushed. ‘I don’t know it.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. He moved out twenty months ago. We share Maisy, but he won’t tell me where he lives now. He probably thinks I might stalk him.’

‘You let your child go off to some unknown destination at the weekend?’

‘I know where he works,’ Hannah said defensively, ‘and I have his email and mobile number.’

‘He’ll be on the electoral register. Even if he’s ex-directory, you can find out where anyone lives if you pay.’

‘I never had the money to do that.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Jinni said. ‘I do. For now. What does he look like?’

‘I can show you his Facebook image.’ She clicked on it, though it hurt her to see his smiling face. ‘I deserve to be happy,’ he had said to her. He looked it.

A part of Hannah knew this was happening far too quickly. Even if she had told a stranger more about herself during the four hours in which they had been travelling together than she had ever told anyone, why should she trust somebody whom she had only just met? Jinni could be a lunatic, trying to trick her into committing a crime. She could be a bored, rich woman amusing herself during a long train journey. Yet Hannah was intoxicated not just by drink but by a new sense of purpose.

She had dreamt of taking revenge on her husband many times. What did it matter whether she killed Con Coad, instead of Jake? She and Jinni were in the same situation, and their husbands deserved what was coming down the line. They so did. Hannah touched the small white scar on her cheekbone. It was one reason why she had just taken Jinni’s Taser. Even if this was all a fantasy, or a wind-up, she had good reason to fear him.

The train was running alongside the sea now. The long bay at Dawlish curved ahead, its red rocks the colour of blood. Its thin railway line was the only one left into the furthest reaches of the West Country. Despite every winter storm and surge, it survived as a testament to what imagination and daring could achieve. The track seemed to defy gravity, floating above the waves whose swell rose periodically to smash like black glass.

‘Let’s do it,’ Jinni urged, and Hannah answered, ‘Yes.’

Once they crossed the Tamar, she could feel the change, a kind of sloughing off from ordinary life. In effect, they had entered another