Gabriela had to restrain herself from biting the doctor’s hand off as she handed her the prescription for a batch of eszopiclone, reeling out the suggested dosage with the final warning, ‘Pills are only a short-term solution. Behavioural therapy is the best approach, in the long term.’

‘I’m sure,’ she said, smiling gratefully, slipping the prescription into her pocket.

As she crossed the road towards home, she felt herself looking over her shoulder, unable to shake the sense that she was not alone. By the time she reached Chester Road, her feet were moving so fast that she felt she would trip. As she made her way up the path towards her front door, she thought of Emsworth before shaking the image away. Whatever it was he had been embroiled in, he’d been caught out. No one was watching her anymore. She was paranoid, justifiably perhaps, but the fear she was experiencing now was misplaced. The thought of Emsworth, the man responsible for sending her entire life into disarray, being caught out should have filled her with some sense of satisfaction and renewed purpose, even if he hadn’t been hung out to dry in quite the way she might have hoped.

It might even have been possible to get her job back, to contact the FCO and explain what had happened, at least to get a reference. But the thought brought not even the slightest sliver of pleasure. When she looked back on those days, it was like looking at a different person, a hologram that might or might not have ever existed at all.

That night she took one of the pills she’d procured from the GP and sat on the sofa. With Tom out playing a gig at a local pub and the children already asleep, the house felt too quiet. Flicking on the television, she sat on the sofa and felt suddenly aware of the pitch-black sky through the terraced doors. It had never occurred to her before that they needed curtains, but suddenly she felt so exposed it was though she was on stage.

Standing, running to the doorway, imagining a cross marked on her forehead as she made her way across the room, a gun pointed at her head from the shadows of their tiny garden, she switched off the light. In the darkness, her heartbeat slowed, and instinctively she knew she had to talk. The voices that rang in her head would not be silenced. Tell Madeleine. There was no reason not to; she was no longer in a state of denial about how deep in she was. Madeleine would know what to do, or at least she would know what to say.

Pulling her phone out of her bag, she dialled the number and cursed as the voicemail kicked in. Retrieving her laptop from her bag, she composed an email, headed Lunch?, keeping the tone light in the text.