After the truth had come out, Dominic didn’t speak to me anymore and Uncle Pete communicated with me only when he had to. He had wanted me to be charged – vandalism, reckless endangerment, I forget the rest – but Sandra had pleaded with him and he’d backed down. Because of the injuries to the woman in the second car, and the involvement of the insurance companies, it hadn’t been simple. There had been compensation claims, an out-of-court settlement that, eventually, came out of the death benefit I received. There were no criminal charges brought in the end. But the story of what had happened – in its black and white version, stripped to the facts – obviously remained on my record.

The worst thing had been how I had destroyed my relationship with my surviving family. I felt a terrible guilt. In a way, what I’d done, the blast of fear and regret that followed, helped me. It was the short sharp shock that people say should be meted out to young offenders, and it worked for me. It brought me out of the cocoon of fantasy and lies I’d been living in, made me face up to what had happened. I was finally able to grieve properly for my parents. I opened up to my counsellor at last, and I did everything I could to act like a model nephew for the next two years.

By the time I left Hastings and headed to university almost two years later, I was different. I had grown up. This doesn’t mean I didn’t have my demons. I had more than my fair share. I still felt, in my heart, out of step with the world. I found it easier to seek solitude than fall into crowds. And I guess, without trying to psychoanalyse myself, it led to the loneliness that made me so vulnerable and open – desperate, even – when Charlie came along and promised to make me whole.

None of my history with the law had crossed my mind when I’d reported Charlie. Perhaps if it had, I would have thought twice about going to the police, even though the circumstances were so different.

My thoughts returned to the present. Where was Charlie now? What was she doing? I guessed she would run, go far away. If she had killed Harold while I was at the police station, did she really think she could get away with it, that the police would blame me? Although she wouldn’t have known I was here, that I had the best alibi it’s possible to get. Was she going to go to my flat and leave something of Harold’s there, some fake souvenir? And how had she killed him? Frightened to death. Yet again, I thought of the dark spirit and thanked God I wasn’t superstitious, then laughed humourlessly at the irony of this.