I was about to go into a meeting to prep Renee for tomorrow’s programme when the locksmith finally returned my call. He could meet me at the flat in half an hour, he said, but that was his only slot.

I postponed an irritated Renee and jumped in a black cab, trying to ignore the way my palms were sweating at the thought of going home. Outside the flat, I leaned against the wall drinking coffee and eating a brownie, watching the silent skinny locksmith slide the bolts in and out of the door-frame. The reflections in the cake-shop’s window played tricks on me as I gazed vacantly into the glass, until I almost thought I saw Alex inside, buying me a hundred chocolate Florentines for our first anniversary, which Digby had unfortunately reached before me, and I actually smiled. Then I shook my head. I made myself think of meeting Seb tonight, and then I realised I had no clean clothes or even underwear to take with me.

‘Are you going to be here for a while?’ I asked the locksmith, licking my chocolatey fingers. ‘I’m just going to pop upstairs.’

He nodded silently. Taking a deep breath, I sidled past him and climbed the stairs. Someone had at least removed the rubbish from the overturned bin and the air had lost that foul and fetid smell from yesterday, but the flat still looked annihilated. Tears sprang to my eyes as I crunched over the pottery shards of my mother’s bowl and my fists clenched unconsciously. I needed to be quick.

I glanced down at the locksmith’s bald spot, and then, heart hammering, I began to climb up to the top storey. Halfway up, I thought I heard a noise.

‘Are you still there?’ I called down.

‘Yes, mate,’ the man answered. ‘I’m still here.’

I went into the bathroom and grabbed my sponge-bag and filled it up with what came first to hand. Then I went to the spare room, untouched by the intruder, and pulled down one of the overnight bags Gar had bought me for my twenty-first. I grabbed a couple of jumpers from the chest of drawers, and then I headed to my bedroom and pushed back the door –

I don’t think I’d ever screamed properly before. It was an unconscious instinctive reaction and afterwards my throat actually hurt, but right then all I could hear was the blood rushing through my head –

The locksmith ran up the stairs. ‘You all right there, love?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ I stuttered eventually. ‘Can you just stay there a second please?’

Joseph Blake lay on the bed. Joseph Blake lay on my bed, half-naked, my long green dress from Bel’s party wrapped around him, a bottle of vodka empty on the duvet beside him.