‘Alex?’ I stared at her until the teapot’s handle began to burn my palm. ‘I don’t understand.’ I relinquished it onto the table.

‘Not Alex,’ she muttered. ‘Troy.’

‘Troy? I still don’t –’ And then we gazed at each other. I felt my eyes go wide. ‘Troy? You don’t mean Troy is – is Seb? They’re the same – the same person?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper.

‘Seb is your – your ex-boyfriend Troy? God.’ I felt like I’d just been punched in the head. ‘Does – have you told the police?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She stood up and walked to the window, her hem swishing on the carpet. ‘I’m so sorry, Maggie. I mean, I knew he was unstable. I just had no idea to what extent.’

‘When did you realise?’ I was trying frantically to piece things together. My head felt like a child had set his spinning top off inside it. ‘Why didn’t you warn me if you knew it was him?’

‘I didn’t know until the afternoon he came to – to get you, I swear,’ Fay pouted prettily. ‘He’d fairly much disappeared when we split up. I only rang him to get a forwarding address for his post. And then on the phone that day he started ranting about how much you’d hurt him.’ She sat down again, perching like a bird on the edge of the sofa. ‘I was truly shocked, Maggie, to be honest. That you’d been together, I mean.’

I looked down at my stripy pyjama knees, at my bandaged foot. I refused to feel guilt now for Fay as well.

‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘the previous time Troy had mentioned you, when we split up, he said he hated you. He blamed you, you see, after he saw us together on the show. It took me a while to get my head around it to be honest. You and him, I mean.’

Those great violet headlamps searched my face. ‘But you have to believe me, Maggie. I didn’t know he was after you. Of course if I’d known what he intended I would have tried even harder to let you know. I thought at the worst he might smash a few things up, or, I don’t know, lock you in a cupboard. You know – to punish you.’

‘To punish me,’ I echoed numbly. Seb’s words from the other night rattled like a spectre in the room.

‘That was the expression he always used. If you hurt him, he’d have to “punish” you. He felt things very deeply.’

‘Obviously,’ I said dryly.

‘But I can’t believe’, she could hardly look at me now, ‘that he actually tried to kill you. He’d never been violent before. Not to me, anyway.’