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The press had given up the ghost within forty-eight hours. There were newer, juicier stories for them to get their teeth stuck into. A new innocent victim for the baying pack to latch on to. After the police announced that they would not be pressing charges against me and that they had reason to believe the person responsible had died in a fire in France, the press seemed to ease off a bit.
The fact was that almost nothing remained of the inside of Claude’s barn. The French authorities were still combing it, trying to find evidence that Jess had indeed perished. It would take some time, they said, but they had no reason to believe anything else had happened. Claude’s testimony was that he’d managed to pull me out of the barn just as he saw me losing consciousness, and that he hadn’t s
