And yet whoever sent me the shoes didn’t leave a note. There was only one thing the parcel could represent, and that was a message. As I dunk my head beneath the water, holding the air in my lungs until my chest feels as if it will burst, I know it – regardless of what Si or Oscar or anyone else has said. I feel it, and sometimes that is as much as one can hope for.

As for finding out my home address, the truth is that it would have been pitifully easy. I’m not on social media, not anymore; I haven’t unwittingly given away pieces of my life online for any stranger to map together. This is more straightforward than that. Anyone who had got into my office – and hadn’t someone left the window open over the weekend? – would only need a couple of minutes of looking through papers to find my address. For God’s sake, I keep my payslips in the drawer. Easier still, he could have followed me.

Despite the fact that there are no windows in this room, I find myself crouching over to protect my body from prying eyes as I step out of the bath. The room is bitterly cold. Aside from the muted sounds of the outside world seeping through the cracks in the kitchen window, the flat is silent.

Moving across to the kitchen counter, a towel wrapped around me, my chest rises and falls in heaving movements. Turning, I grab a chair and then another and lodge them against the door, jamming the handle.

Every inch of my body is hyper-alert so that I am like a wolf stalking through a forest as I move through the bedsit towards my bedroom – except wolves move in packs, and I am alone.

It is extraordinary how quickly people disappeared after it all kicked off. Some were happy, at first, to send a text or occasionally a card telling me how much they cared and wanted to meet up, but it was rarely followed through. Those who did visit were clearly there to absorb the details first-hand, and then fell away again once their thirst for gossip had been satiated.

Besides, there is only one person I want to speak to now, and she isn’t here.

Chapter 22

Gabriela

With Madeleine gone, her role was unofficially absorbed into Gabriela’s, so that she was now reporting again directly to Emsworth with their once ten-strong team culled to just four. Not only did this give Gabriela the chance to prove herself as a leader, but it provided the perfect vantage point from which to watch his every move.