The night before she was murdered outside her Dordogne home, Karen Carter appeared to have much on her mind.
The mother of four was in the process of walking away from her 30-year marriage and starting a new life in this idyllic corner of south-west France. Plans were already in motion.
There was the sweet puppy she'd collected five days earlier, a new French bank account she'd set up and a one-bedroom cottage she was negotiating to buy and where she planned to live alone. That future, as we now know, is one the former teacher will tragically never get to live.
For just 24 hours after confiding in a close friend about the dramatic new direction her life was taking, she was stabbed eight times in a frenzied late-night attack outside the 250-year-old holiday home she owned with her South African husband, Alan.
Fatally injured by the savage blows, including one which penetrated her aorta, Karen was dead by the time emergency services reached her.