Then, slowly, deliberately, he wrote it down, word for word.

“That will go in the report, ma’am,” he said, without any triumph, just the plain statement of a fact.

Vanessa’s hand went to her mouth, far too late.

She had spent the whole afternoon believing she could talk her way through anything.

In the end it was her own talking, and nothing else, that shut the door.

There is a grim justice in that, though I take no pleasure in it.

Vanessa’s whole life had been built on the power of her own words, on her ability to talk her way into trust and out of trouble, to make any situation bend to whatever story she chose to tell.