As I stare at Kevin's increasingly lifeless body, I think I expect him to be transformed into something else. Something without threat or menace. Something without intent or effect.
But he looks exactly the same as he did a few minutes ago: mouth twisted up, eyes wide and watching, hands curled towards a fist, the precipice of destruction. And I can't look away from him, because I'm terrified that when I look back he'll be coming toward me, hell-bent on revenge. You fucking bitch. I killed him.

I only manage to look away when they block my view of him; tall strangers, moving into my kitchen. A man I don't recognise, followed by another; tall and serious, with eyes that scan the scene with a calm, controlled detachment. He doesn't look surprised or alarmed by the sight of a fifteen-stone man in a puddle of his own blood on my stone floor. They do, however, look surprised to see me, my position on the floor by the kitchen door slightly hidden, and so it takes them another scan before they spot me. One of them comes toward me, muttering something into a small radio hidden on his breast pocket as he does. Unfamiliar words. Instructions.  Confirmation. A crackle of the radio in response. He lowers himself down in front of me and smiles a serious sort of smile at me.

"Dr Marlowe? Alex? I'm Detective O'Connell, I'm from the SOC task-force," he tells me.  "There's an ambulance on its way. How are you doing?  Can you tell me where else you're hurt?" He casts his serious blue eyes over me, at my battered face and relative state of undress.

The other one is bending over Kevin now. Taking his pulse. From his wrist, not his neck. Because his neck has a hole in it. A hole I put there.

"He's dead," I say to no one in particular.

O'Connell nods. "You're okay, everything's going to be okay?" Is that a question? "Can you stand up for me maybe?" My face feels huge and misshapen as I open my mouth to speak. So, I close it again. "Do you know what day it is, Doctor?" he asks me, manoeuvring his body so to block Kevin from my view.

I focus my gaze on him and frown in a weird, slow, blinking confusion. "What?"

"Today. What day is it?" He smiles softly, except it's flat.

Blankness. "Um." I swallow, licking my tongue across my dry papered-over lips. "Friday.  No, Saturday." The large clock on the wall reads ten minutes to one. Yesterday I was happy. Yesterday I hadn't murdered anyone. Yesterday I was still me.

"Spot on, good job," he says. "Nothing too serious then." Another of his flat smiles. "I'm going to have a female officer come speak with you in just a minute - but let's get you out of here first okay. Let's get you up off that floor." He proffers his hand to me which I just stare at dumbly. When I don't move, he speaks again, firmer this time, but with patience. "We really need to get you out of this room now, Alex," he says softly.

Oh, yes. Of course. Because I murdered someone in it.

"I need you to give that to me now, okay?" he says, eyeing the knife still clutched in my right hand. He pulls a white handkerchief out of his pocket and wraps it around his hand. "Can you let go of it for me now?" An encouraging smile as he reaches down to take it from me. I lift it up to him, but it takes a tremendous amount of effort to disengage my fingers I find, like it's some extra limb I require, that I can't afford to lose. "That's it," he says, when I let go.

O'Connell takes the weapon and hands it behind him to some capable-looking man in uniform. He's holding open a clear plastic bag, like the ones they make you deposit liquids into at the airport, except much larger. He drops the knife into it, handle down. O'Connell then drops the handkerchief into a second bag, before reaching his hand back out to successfully lift me up from the floor.

There are even more people in the kitchen now. Two kneel by the body of Kevin, one stands guard by the door, the other carrying the evidence out of it, O'Connell. Six men in my kitchen and not one of them is the one I need. Where is he? My legs weaken and my vision blurs and O'Connell has to step in and put an arm around to steady me, before he leads me towards the door.

I hear it before I register it. A voice from the hallway calling my name, a voice I do recognise.

"Alex? Alex.." it says, the people by the door stepping aside immediately. Mark? Mark is here. How is Mark here? I suppose it makes sense that Mark is in my crime scene of a kitchen. Mark. I feel happier to see him than I ever have. He gives the body on the floor barely a glance as he comes toward me, O'Connell giving way to his definite authority.

Mark's eyes seem to darken as he drinks in the sight of me. When he puts an arm around me I almost fall into him, a rattled mess. It's surprising how much the warmth and necessity of a human who knows me outside of all this disables me actually. He isn't who I want or who I need, but he's here and he knows me and so in this moment, he's exactly what I need. Numbness fills out my fingers and toes, my skin under some traumatised anaesthetic as I cling on to him. When he pulls back to examine my damaged face, his look is careful and considered.

"I don't..." I blink a few times and shake my head to clear my blurring vision. "How... are you here?"

Mark says the next words quietly. "Jake. He called me." I feel my body sag with relief just at the very mention of his name. Mark's arm tightens around me. Christ, I'm so tired. "He said that he was too far... that you needed —." He stops abruptly. "Alex, look at me, how is your head? There's an ambulance on its way. You're safe now, okay? Look at me, just at me."

I don't understand why they're bothering with an ambulance. Kevin doesn't need an ambulance. An ambulance isn't going to help him now. I watched him die. You didn't just watch him die - you killed him, remember?

"I killed him." I nod, my voice oddly calm. Mark steps in close and wraps his other arm around me again and tells me to try not to speak. It occurs to me that maybe it's because he doesn't want me to incriminate myself. As if that would be possible. My hands are covered in Kevin's blood. I just handed the murder weapon over. A cut and dry case if ever there was one. "He's dead. I killed him Mark," I say again. Just to be clear. In case anything isn't. He says nothing, walking me instead towards the door and out of the kitchen, while ordering someone behind us to bring me some water.

A precipice. Either a loud, frenzied breakdown of panic or an all-consuming, quiet catatonia. This isn't real. It can't be. Nothing feels real. Until I see him nothing is real. Yes. That's what it is. My eyes close over, my lids too heavy suddenly. I'm exhausted. Bone-deep exhaustion. I killed him, I killed a man. My eyes flick wide open again, wild and panicked.

My front door is splintered into a thousand pieces, glass and wood everywhere; all over the shoes that line up near the door: my bright-pink running trainers, Jake's dark-grey desert boots that he wore on our first date, my green hunters, my black hunters, a pair of battered trainers of Jake's that he wore to cut the grass once.

Fred. He'll be terrified when he gets home. He could cut himself on the glass or splinter his paw on the shattered, wood chipping. I explain this to Mark and he tells me not to worry about it, because someone will take care of it. Then he shouts more orders at a pale red-haired officer to go outside and look for my cat. Fred, I tell him. His name is Fred.  It's insane. All of it. It's not real.

In the living-room, he sits me on the couch, the same couch where Jake made love to me last night, the same couch where I told him his mother was dying, the same couch where he watched football and stroked my feet. Anything seems possible on this couch now. Mark says nothing as we sit on it, he has his phone out and is looking frustratingly at it, as the pre-ordered glass of water appears from somewhere. Not O'Connell, but another tall stranger. Mark barely nods his thanks, his focus on me.

"Drink some water Alex," he orders.

"What happens now?" I ask. "Am I under arrest?"

He frowns, a deep crease forming between his dark eyebrows. For the first time, I notice he has a freckle right in the corner of his eye, next to the bridge of his nose. I can't understand how I've never noticed that before. It's all I can see now.

"For what?" He gives me a look of disbelief.

I can't say it. I don't have to say it. Instead, I lift the glass to my lips and drink. My mouth is so dry and my throat so scratchy and raw. The water coats it like a cooling nectar. Mark watches me carefully, staring hard at every part of my face. Like he's seeing it for the first time.

"We need to take a statement from you, I can do it, or if you'd prefer a female officer I can arrange for that." He's speaking softly, but his eyes are angry. "Whatever you'd prefer, Alex."

"Where's Jake?" I ask instead, lowering the glass to rest it on my knee. "When he called you, where was he?"

"I don't know," he says.

"But you spoke to him? How did he sound? Did he say he was coming here?"

Mark swallows in an obvious sort of way and avoids my eyes. "It was a very short conversation, Alex. We need a bloody paramedic" - a glance out the window - "I'll have someone go upstairs and get you some clothes befo—."

"But did he say he was coming here?" My voice is too high. A childlike whine. It hurts my head and rings in my ears. How long ago did he call me? It feels like days ago. "He just called to tell you to come here, without saying anything else? That doesn't make sense. Was it before or after he called me, do you know?"

"Alex, I don't know much of anything right now." He still isn't looking at me. "He called me to say I had to get someone to your house immediately. That you were in danger. That's all."

Mark is about to say something else when the high-pitched squall of the ambulance siren diverts his attention. Useless. A useless waste of an emergency service. He's bloody dead.

I'm about to ask Mark about Jake again when I hear a knock on the living room door.  Turning, I see a woman with black hair, pulled back in a firm knot. The expression on her tanned face when she looks at me is warm and soft, and her mouth and high cheekbones make me think of Tash.  God, I miss Tash.  "Sir?" she says to Mark. "Ambulance is here." She glances surreptitiously back in my direction.

"Yes I'm aware of that, Reed," Mark says brusquely, an eyebrow cocked in condescension. "Alex, we need to get you to hospital - we can take your statement on the way." He looks back at Reed, "Go upstairs and grab something for Alex to wear. I want you in the ambulance with us."

Reed exits with a nod and a lowered head that makes me wonder how much she hates him. Also, I want to object to this Reed rummaging around in my drawers touching my things but then I remember that my entire house is full of police officers and since I was almost raped and killed in it, and since I just murdered someone in the kitchen, it really isn't that important in the scheme of things.

"Mark, no, I can't leave." I shake my head. "Jake will be here soon and I need to wait until he gets here. I don't want him to come home to this, to these people in the house," I explain, in a way that to my own mind sounds more than reasonable. The look on Mark's face suggests otherwise.

"Alex."

"You never heard him on the phone, he was terrified Mark, no, no I need to be here... I need to wait here, for him."

"Alex, you can't worry about that right now, Jake wanted me to look after you," he says. "Which means we need to get you to the hospital - he'd want me to take you to the hospital."

He would. I know he would. But I need him. I need to see him, have him hold me, have him tell me everything is going to be alright. "Mark, please.  I just... I need to... I just want to wait for him..." I need for him to tell me none of this is real.  "I need to be here... I need to wait until he gets here... I need to see him."

"Alex, please," Mark says, gently. He reaches out and places his hand on my shoulder. It's warm and comforting, but it's not the touch that I want and it causes tears to spring to my eyes. I twist away from him and breathe deep. "Alex, you've been through a fucking ordeal, you're in shock, you're not thinking straight. You know this is the right thing to do."

I shake my head again, but it hurts when I shake it so I press my hand to my forehead and close my eyes instead. When I open them the dizziness rushes over me and it's as though some floodgate has been opened, the pain and exhaustion and sickness rushing over me in a wave. My head suddenly feels like spoiled fruit, battered and soft and useless. The pain courses down the side of my face and I drop my hand from my head and I see it then. The dark sticky splatter of Kevin's blood across the back of my pale hand. The wave of nausea comes fast, flooding my mouth with bile and causing a sweat to break out over my forehead and down my back. There's a paper-bin down by the side of the couch which I reach for, spilling the contents of my dinner up in two vile heaves over Jake's crumpled-up, two-day old, sport section.

When I turn to face Mark, he has the most terrified look on his face.

"I'll take that," Mark offers, taking the bin from me. "I'm sending a Paramedic in."

I feel nothing as they look me over. I need to go to the hospital, they say. We can't take any chances, they say. Not with the baby. Best to get everything looked at - as I knew very well - they say.  Mark's expression had dropped as I'd told the paramedic - Graham: Irish lilt and kind doe eyes - that I was eight-weeks pregnant. As expected, he'd only become even more insistent that I let them take me to the hospital. According to Graham, I've had quite a 'fright'. A fright.  Interesting summation of my puncturing a man's neck and letting him bleed to death on my kitchen floor. All I can think about as he talks to me in soft hushed tones and dabs at my broken battered skin is that they, comrades in health preservation, know that I just caused the death of another human being.

When Reed returns with clothes, Graham and his colleague whose name has escaped me, tell me they'll ready the ambulance for me.

Jake would want me to go with them. He'd never forgive me if I let something happen to the baby. There's no pain below my neck at all and absolutely nothing to suggest that there's anything wrong with the baby, but he'd never forgive me for taking the chance. Yet, when I examine it, there's something defiant in my resistance. Something screaming, silent, but at the top of its lungs, that if he wants me to go to the bloody hospital, then he should bloody well be here to take me. It's stupid.  I know this. I'm being a selfish, idiotic fool.

Mark stares at me expectantly, while Reed stands by the living room door, holding a bundle of my clothes. It's a well-chosen bundle too - it makes me wonder if they teach them these things; what broken, battered women would feel most restored in: an oversized mustard jumper and soft grey leggings in my case.

"I just need to use the bathroom, then we can go," I say finally, much to Mark's relief. He looks askance to Reed with a quiet command for her to go with me upstairs.

Out in the hallway, someone has swept up most of the broken front door, so it's now a mound of wood and glass on the inner vestibule. As I take the stairs, my legs wobble once more, white spots flickering in the edges of my vision and when I close them a new, white-hot thud of remembrance from Kevin's fist shoots across my cheek up to my temple.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It feels like he's hit me all over again and I have to grip onto the bannister to move myself up the stairs, Reed following behind me on quiet feet, ready to catch me if I fall. There are more strangers in my bedroom. Gloved officers pointing at the floor and bed and smashed lamp.

"I'll be waiting right here when you get out," she says gently, as I go to close the bathroom door behind me. I nod, grateful that she isn't going to follow me inside and watch me throw up, which I'm now certain I'm going to do as soon as I reach the toilet bowl. She smiles a reassuring smile at me as I close the door all the way and turn the lock. On unsteady legs, I cross to the toilet, trying not to think about what the thumping inside my head, the dizziness, and the endless sickness might mean. I've had a fright, that's all. Nothing is real.

More salad and bile empty themselves down the toilet and only when I'm pretty sure I've nothing left, do I stand up and walk to the sink to rinse my mouth out and splash water on my face. The thumping is getting ever more painful with every movement, and as I stare back at my reflection, I hope it's because he's broken my cheekbone and nothing internal. It had felt like nothing when he'd done it too, not really. But he hit me hard - I can feel and see that now. He'd wanted me to black out. He wanted me unconscious and unable to fight back.

The mirror. The person staring back from it looks confused and disgusted. Who are you?  Murderer. Killer. The words are hissed in Kevin's voice, close to my ear, like he's in here with me, right behind me. Then, with an awful sickening thud to the chest, I get it. He'll always be with me now, won't he? Wherever I go, whoever I'm with, he'll be there too. When Jake touches me, I'll feel Kevin's touch, or his fingers closing around my throat. When I nurse my baby against my breast, I'll feel Kevin's vile words whispered into my ear, or his fist pounding my face.

Always. Forever.

An awful, almost suffocating feeling of aloneness overtakes me. So shocking and unexpected that it brings tears to my eyes and snatches the air from my lungs. I feel adrift. No hope at all of being pulled back to land. I'm not going to be able to live with this. I can barely bloody breathe with the knowledge of what I've done. How can I live and love and function with the knowledge that I drained the life from another human being? How can I do the job I need to do when I took life so bloody easily? Jake's voice then: Stop that. Fucking stop that. You did what you had to do.

Yes. That's it.

I did what I had to do. He was going to kill Jake. He promised it. He was going to rip my heart out and I couldn't let that happen. I had no other choice. I made a decision. I did what I had to do. Him or me. Him or Jake. Him or my baby. I had no other choice.

God, Jake, where are you? I need you. I need you because without you, I won't survive this. This suffocating emptiness is because he isn't here. Because if he was here with me, holding me and soothing me, then this wouldn't feel so fatal. Nothing feels fatal when he's with me. He's the strength that I don't have. He always has been.

The dizziness that comes then is sudden and hot and like nothing I've ever felt before, it feels like if I black out then I might never wake up again.  It occurs to me then that he must have hit me too hard. One punch from a fist like his could be dangerous. Two deadly. Blood leaking out from a cracked skull.

The commotion from downstairs is sudden and loud. Men shouting, threats being bellowed, orders thrown, voices angered. Loud movement coming up the stairs, pounding like Kevin as he chased me down them in the dark. I tense and gaze at the door in time to see the handle turn.

"Is she in there? Why is the fucking door locked?" his deep gravelled voice says.

I almost pass out from relief. He's here.

"Alex?!  Alex, baby it's me, open the door." Another twist of the handle, more forceful this time. Why can't I move? The door handle moves, back and forth noisily, but I just stare at it.  "Alex, please open the door, please it's me."

He sounds more desperate than I've ever heard him and I want to go to him but I can't move a bloody inch. The room is spinning and I feel paralysed, my bones locked together in some kind of failsafe mode. They'll shatter if forced to move, I'm certain of it. Mark's voice then. Booming and authoritative. I don't really hear the words though. Reed is talking too, but there's only one voice I can really hear.

I'm terrified. Petrified of seeing him. Of having him see me. Now. Knowing what I've done. I'm not his perfect something good anymore; I'm dirty and spoiled and he'll see that the instant he looks at me. Murderer. Killer.

"Jake." It comes out as a half-sob, half-plea.

"Baby, stand back from the door, yeah? Do you hear me? Stay away from the door."

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The wave of anguish from him blasts over me as the door bursts open.

His eyes are wide and glittering, a dark green colour I've never seen them before. He looks bigger than I've ever seen him too, like he's grown in size and stature since I last saw him; dangerous, dark and deadly. Scanning my face and down my body I see his fists curl. Then very slowly his body starts to relax, his shoulders dropping, his arms loosening, his fists uncurling.

A memory, unbidden and unexpected. The night I washed his hands clean of Kevin's blood.  The way he begged me to tell him that I loved him. It makes sense now. All of it. The panic.  Why it was so important for him to hear me say the words out loud. Please tell me you love me, please tell me you love me, please, I think, over and over to myself in those silent, torturous seconds as he stares back at me. Why hasn't he moved an inch toward me? Why is he still staring? Why does he look so afraid? Please tell me you love me. Please.

"I did what I had to do," I whisper in a haunted inside-out voice.

"I know," he nods. "I know baby, I know you did." His voice is bare and broken-sounding. "I'm here now."

He is. He's here. I nod, biting my cheek to stop the flood of tears that are threatened.

"Please Jake... please tell me...."

I can't finish the sentence before the suffocating relief of darkness takes over, the ground rushing up to meet me as my white-knuckled grip slips from the cool, white porcelain of the sink. He catches me before I fall, I feel that. Warm, strong arms wrapping around me. He's shouting my name, an echoing cracked panic that penetrates the onslaught of darkness. I try and get back to him, but it's like swimming upstream, against something thick and cloying. I can't hold onto him any longer. But he holds onto me, with a grip as strong as he is. I feel it as the last remnants of consciousness slips from me; his arms circle me, his voice close, but far away as he pleads with me.

"No, no, no, don't you fucking dare. Stay with me. I'm here now, don't you fucking dare leave me - where is that fucking paramedic? Alex, look at me... please look at me... I love you... I love you..."

There's nothing I want more than to stay with him, and from here held in his arms I think he's never looked more beautiful than he does right now. But, of course, I always think that. The darkness is stronger however. The darkness is everything I'm not. Strong and powerful and unyielding - just like he is. It takes me with it like it always does. Consuming me. Until finally nothing hurts anymore and everything is dark. But it doesn't matter because he's there. He's there and he loves me and nothing else matters.