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Kim took no pleasure in handcuffing Carly and leading her to the front of the building. She felt only satisfaction that no more innocent women would be brutally killed at Carly’s hand.

She paused at the edge of the building.

More police cars had arrived. A precautionary ambulance was waiting to the left, and Bryant was speaking to the driver of the police van primed to transport their killer while a paramedic applied a dressing to his hand.

Bobbi and Leona were holding on to each other as though neither of them would ever let go.

‘What have I done?’ Carly breathed as her eyes rested on mother and daughter. Tears streamed over her cheeks.

‘You took away hope,’ Kim said as she moved Carly forward slowly. ‘None of these relationships was perfect. They rarely are. But your actions mean that the girls you were trying to protect can never make things right.’

Kim had never felt the need to seek parental approval. In her case, she’d have had to kill her own brother to get her mother’s approval. And yet there was a small voice inside her that said she wasn’t immune.

Her foster mother, Erica, had been one of the most decent people she had ever met. The woman had had a strong sense of right and wrong, tempered with fairness and empathy. She had trusted authority and believed in justice. The three years Kim had spent with her had taught her a lot.

She rarely questioned what had fuelled her own desire to become a police officer, but was she seeking parental approval from one of the only people she’d ever truly cared about? Erica hadn’t given birth to her. She hadn’t fed or bathed her. She hadn’t rocked her to sleep as a baby. Yet in those few years, the relationship had been formed. Was her career choice an effort to make her foster mother proud?

‘I just wanted to be their friend,’ Carly said.

‘You didn’t have any friends at school?’ Kim asked.

Carly shook her head. ‘I wanted some. When Mom had had enough of me trying to find ways to make friends, she allowed me to go to a party not long after I started high school.’

Kim waited.

‘I believed her when she told me it was a costume party. She dressed me as a doll. I was the only person in a costume. I looked ridiculous in front of the people who I’d be spending the next five years with.’

‘I’m sorry she did that to you,’ Kim said honestly.

‘The girls will all hate me now, won’t they?’ Carly asked in a voice that was broken and lost.

Carly had only ever wanted to be liked, to be special, to have her mother’s approval and to fit in with her peers. She wasn’t psychotic and she wasn’t evil, but ultimately she had taken three innocent lives.

‘Yes, Carly, I’m afraid they will.’