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T
he funeral took place at the crematorium in Southampton. It was a cold day and the sky was a moody gunmetal. The chapel was full and outside in the street the media gathered. Reporters,
photographers
, camera operators. There were even a couple of satellite trucks for relaying live pictures back to the television news studios.

Maggie and I sat together in the front row. We held hands and bowed our heads and the emotions that swirled within us were mixed. A minister with a bald head read the eulogy, which was short and somewhat impersonal. He’d asked me if I wanted to do it but I declined. It was all too raw, I said.

The coffin entered the furnace to an organ rendition of
Morning has Broken.

It was what Vince had wanted, along with a request that his ashes be scattered across an open moor close to his cottage in the New Forest.

I
n the weeks that followed Vince’s funeral I struggled to come to terms with what had happened. I soon realized that I probably never would. DCI Temple talked to me at length. At the first informal interview he surprised me with an apology.

‘I want you to know that I’m sorry, Mr Cain,’ he said. ‘A lot of bad apples have taken root in the force and we need to find them and turf them out. You were right to expose George Banks for what he did.
And my colleagues were wrong to victimize you because of it. We should encourage zero tolerance no matter what the circumstances. Jordan and Priest have brought further shame on us and it’s
something
we all regret. But I want you to know that we’re not all bad.’

I told him I couldn’t get my head around how a man like Priest could suddenly turn into a killer who was prepared to wipe out an entire family.

‘It happens,’ Temple said. ‘You should know that better than most since you reporters are always writing about such creatures.’

The papers called Priest a fiend and a madman. They called me a hero. In fact one paper, a popular tabloid, asked me to write the full story of our experience. It ran over four full pages. What’s more, the editor liked it so much that he offered me a contract as a reporter. It was a surprise and came as a great relief since I’d decided not to carry on with the agency. That had died along with Vince.

So what about my marriage? Was that dead too?

Maggie and I finally got around to talking about it eight days after the fire. We had purposely avoided it until then because our priority was Laura. She had to be taken care of.

Thankfully a police officer trained in first aid had managed to revive her with CPR at the scene, despite the fact that she had
effectively
‘died’ in my arms. We would have lost her for sure if it hadn’t been for Temple and his team. Their swift, professional reaction when they realized how bad she was saved her life. It was touch and go for a while, but by the time the ambulance arrived her lungs were functioning and her heart was beating.

After leaving hospital Laura started to recover with remarkable speed. The doctors and psychiatrists who treated her said that she was a strong little girl. They were impressed that she could talk about it and not retreat into herself for long periods of time. I was very proud of her. But it did seem as though she’d blocked out what Priest had said about her mother and Vince. She acted as though it never happened.

I wasn’t so lucky. Priest’s words echoed in my head every second of every hour. Talking about it didn’t help. It just intensified the pain. Maggie begged me to forgive her. She said she loved me and had
made a terrible mistake. Our ordeal had made her realize what a fool she’d been and how much she had put at risk.

We both cried a lot but I didn’t allow the anger in me to surface because I felt that we had all been through enough. Instead, I told her that I would try to forgive and forget what had happened between her and Vince. But the truth is I’m not sure I can.

Jennifer Priest
eventually
went on trial. The jury rejected her plea of manslaughter and she was sentenced to life for murder. Dessler faced a variety of charges and ended up getting a three-year jail term. DS Jordan was kicked out of the force and given a two-year sentence on corruption charges. Nadelson was ordered to do some
community
service.

The lottery commission decided to give Vince’s jackpot win to charity. I told them that Vince had intended to share it with me but this fell on deaf ears, as I knew it would.

Temple told me I wouldn’t face charges for assaulting the two youths. To keep them quiet he would bring lesser charges against
them
. I thanked him for that and I also thanked him for saving our lives.

‘It was a team effort,’ he said. ‘Every one of my people did a good job.’

So a new phase of my life has begun. I’m once again a salaried hack and loving every minute of it. The paper has already got me working on a major investigation that will cause quite a stir when it’s
eventually
published. But that’s another story for another day.

Meanwhile, I spend a lot of time wondering if my marriage will survive. You see, things are not the same now. I feel differently about Maggie and she knows it. So we’ll just have to see. After all, none of us can ever really know what is going to happen from one day to the next.

And that, I suppose, is why life is really just one big lottery.