She’d dreamt about nothing else for years.

That was when she’d been able to dream.

Now here he was, standing in front of her, shaking so hard she’d surely have been able to hear his knees knocking if the wind weren’t so fierce.

His once handsome, now dissolute face was a white, stricken moon in the dark night. His hair was tossing around like trapped straw in a gale. He’d have run if he could, but the men either side of him – nameless, faceless and handsomely paid – were preventing it.

They were watching her too. Neither of them spoke. They were silent, solid, knew why they were there, knew that after they must silently disappear.

A fleeting memory of little Michelle Cross on a busy street flashed into her mind and was gone. She’d been there one minute, gone the next – to the arms of the Virgin Mary.

The Virgin Mary.

She could see he was shouting, crying, begging, but the wind was snatching his words away, hurling them like feathers into the stormy night.

The cliff edge was so close.

A hundred feet below the sea was a foaming, furious black mass, heaving colossal waves on to the slick, jagged rocks.

She wondered if he’d ever dreamt about her.

Had she troubled his mind at all since he’d last seen her?

She knew she must have. How had he felt?

Guilty? Afraid? Vulnerable?

Certainly not as terrified as he felt now.

He’d no doubt hoped he’d never see her again.

But here she was, standing before him on this deserted tourist spot at the edge of the world, and he knew why.

What he didn’t know, yet, was whether she was going to let him live or die.