The man had spotted my camera, which meant he was practiced at looking for exactly that, which meant he was no amateur; and Ottoline had killed the feed, which meant she now understood that I had been watching, which meant she knew that I knew.

The game had changed in the space of a second.

I was no longer a wife quietly building a case against an unsuspecting enemy.

I was a wife whose unsuspecting enemy had just become a cornered one — and a cornered person with a decade-long murder plan and an accomplice is far more dangerous than a patient one.

Everything after that black screen happened fast, because the moment Ottoline knew she was caught, she stopped being patient, and a woman who has abandoned patience and still has access to my daughter is the single most frightening thing I have ever had to imagine.

I did not yet know she had already gone to the school.