Now that I knew, it was laughably obvious—and yet, the shock was enormous.

What also landed was the understanding that, in a way, I’d always known I’d relapsed. It was as if, when I’d started abusing drugs again, a part of me had sliced itself off from the main track and run on a parallel path. I had worked very hard to ignore that phantom self but now and again, I’d catch a glimpse of it—a glimpse of me—almost keeping pace.

Now that I knew, it was hard to believe how I’d managed to blind myself.

But that was addiction, that was denial. There was nothing special about me. Day in, day out, I saw how hard addicts worked to hide their shame-filled behaviour from themselves. When they finally ran out of road and went careering smack-bang into the truth, it wasn’t that they remembered things they’d conveniently forgotten. They’d always known the facts, but some shift happened which recontextualized them.

I was no different.

I called Nola, who sounded as if she’d been expecting to hear from me. She said, ‘Come over when you finish for the day.’

Then I rang Quin but it went straight to message. I asked him to call me, then went to work—where I had to listen to Bronte describe my own delusions, almost word for word.

‘I thought it was fine to take the tablets,’ Bronte had said. ‘Because a doctor had prescribed them.’

‘But,’ I said, going through the motions as best I could, ‘as soon as you started, the craving for more and stronger would kick in?’

‘It did. I admit it.’

‘You had other options? You knew you had? And you still went for the dangerous one?’

‘Yes. Yes. And yes.’

‘But you’re educated,’ Trassa told Bronte. ‘You know French words and the names of Greek gods. You’d got free of heroin years earlier so why would you do something so stupid?’

‘Education makes no difference. I forgot I was an addict. No, that’s wrong, I decided to forget.’

‘Why, though?’ Poor Trassa was trying to understand. ‘If your life was good?’

‘But it wasn’t.’ She bit her lip. ‘Rachel was right. When Freya was…when Eden changed Freya’s plans, it felt as if I had no reason to live. I had managed to stay hopeful for a long, long time because I’d expected good things would come to pass.’

‘I don’t get it.’ Lowry was scornful. ‘Okay, you’re upset about your daughter and your horses but you’d kicked your habit. That’s a big deal. Why would you take drugs that would lead you back to smack?’

Bronte gave him a cool stare. ‘Because we addicts’—she twirled a finger around the room, ending by pointing it at Lowry—‘at our core, we want an excuse to relapse.’