‘No, well,’ I said flatly, ‘I obviously have that effect on men.’ I had the sense of a great pressure bearing down on me; of everything I’d known shifting shape again. I wanted to stand and scream; to burst out through the roof into oblivion. I picked at the bandage on my hand instead.

‘So I asked DI Fox to let me tell you myself,’ she quickly pointed out. ‘I thought I should. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Thank you,’ I said stiffly, still trying to grasp this new reality. The text message I’d received from Fay that night at Pendarlin finally made sense. ‘So – you were trying to warn me about Seb then? I thought you meant Alex when I got your text.’

‘I’d been ringing your phone all afternoon, since I’d spoken to Troy, but I just kept getting your voicemail. I assumed you’d have got the messages, but in the end I rang Alex because I was worried by how mad Troy sounded. Alex was in Bristol, so he drove down. I don’t think he really believed me, but he rang the local police.’

I remembered the slowly cruising police car; my voice snatched up by the wind as I shouted desperately at its tail-lights, trapped by that bloody wire.

‘I didn’t get your messages in time,’ I said slowly, my mind somersaulting wildly as I started to compute it all. I felt sick. ‘Fay, sorry. Would you mind just giving me a minute?’ I staggered to my feet, my leg stiff from sitting for so long.

‘No, of course not.’ She stood quickly as if to help me – but I was all right on my own. ‘I need to ring my agent anyway.’

I pulled open the balcony door as Fay left the room, and stepped out into the cold.

Below me the grey-green sea swelled gently like a giant sigh. The afternoon was colourless, the sky a huge merging of cloud and colour into grey. Into nothingness.

Tiny pins of moisture pricked my face as I leaned against the damp rail watching a single gull wheel and surf the sky. For a moment the smooth-breasted white figure battled against the wind, and then he gracefully pivoted above me to let the slipstream take him where it chose. And I knew that I must succumb to the fate that had brought me here, that there was no point fighting it; that to recover from Seb’s campaign of terror I needed to somehow accept it – accept it and get on.

When Fay came back I attempted a smile as I sloshed out the last of the Earl Grey with an almost steady hand. The tea was stewed.

‘My agent’s got me an audition for I’m a Celebrity, can you believe it?’ She looked shell-shocked.