He shrugged helplessly. ‘…She’d been mugged. It affected her badly. Any time I tried to talk about the tablets, she reminded me. I was trying to be supportive, so I felt I should shut up. But we—Naaz and I—copped on that she must be taking more than the prescribed amount. So we went looking and found prescriptions from two doctors in Dublin and another from a doctor in Waterford. She’d also ordered some online. She didn’t need a prescription for that but they cost hundreds.’

Doctor shopping. I saw this a lot.

‘As well as the sleepers, she had prescriptions for Valium and Xanax. The tablets were hidden everywhere in the flat.’

‘Like?’

Jonah and Naaz exchanged a shrug. ‘In jacket pockets, zipped inside cushions, sellotaped to the underside of the couch.’

Deep inside me, a bell clanged. This type of subterfuge featured a lot in testimonials—what was different about this time?

For a second I puzzled over it but had to move on.

‘She had cut the cards of tablets up into tiny amounts,’ Naaz said. ‘Twos, mostly, sometimes four. We found two tablets inside a bag of oven chips in the freezer. That was an accident,’ she added. ‘Finding those.’

‘We laid them all out on the coffee table,’ Jonah said, ‘with the prescriptions, and called her in.’

‘You’re making it sound like there were thousands,’ Ella yelled. ‘There were literally, like, twenty.’

‘There were thirty-one sleepers, eighteen Xanax and twenty-nine Valium,’ he said. ‘And it wasn’t the number, it was that they were hidden.’

‘But—’

Again, Murdo shushed Ella.

‘We hoped it would shock her into stopping,’ Jonah continued. ‘But she went crazy. Crying. Saying we didn’t know how traumatized she was. I felt really guilty…but angry too because how could I get her to stop if I couldn’t say anything to her?’

‘Same,’ Naaz agreed.

‘Before the mugging, did you ever notice a pattern of impulsive behaviour from Ella?’ Leaving nothing to chance, we’d already been through this on the phone.

‘Hey!’ Ella’s face was dark with umbrage. ‘What’s that got to do with sleeping tablets—’

With a look I managed to silence her but poor Jonah was agonized. I nodded at him to continue. ‘Yeah. Like, she and I binge-watch stuff, same as everyone, but when Ella loves something, she literally stays up all night. That’s a regular thing. Which is bad because of work. And bad because it’s something we’re meant to share. I always fall asleep but in the morning she’s still sitting there, watching the last episode.’

Ella squeaked with outrage and Jonah whispered, ‘Sorry.’

‘There was a time we were watching a K-drama—’ He looked at me. ‘A TV series from Korea.’

I know what a K-drama is! Exsqueeze me, son, I’m down with the kids!