Sasha was sitting on the sofa. Her bag lay by her feet, half its contents spilled out like guts on the carpet. She had a cushion on her lap. She didn’t get up, or move, but rolled her eyes towards me. She must have been in the flat when I got home, but I hadn’t looked in the living room.

‘Sasha. What are you doing here?’

She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. I went over and stood in front of her, my mind racing all over the place, hearing voices. Lance saying that Sasha was a fantasist, that she had invented everything. The man from the lost property office telling me that Charlie hadn’t been lying.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sasha said. Her voice was very quiet, a forced whisper.

‘What for?’ I didn’t want to get too close. All of a sudden, I was afraid of her.

She opened her mouth to speak but again, nothing came out. What was wrong with her?

I crouched on the carpet before her, keeping my distance. ‘Sasha, I saw Lance at the police station.’

She stared at me.

‘He said that you made the whole thing up, that you were a fantasist.’

She shook her head and said a single word. ‘Liar.’ Her face creased with pain and it hit me: why had I believed him, a stranger, over the woman I had known and trusted longer than any other? Sasha hadn’t been lying. Lance was the fantasist.

‘I believe you,’ I said, and her lips twitched; the faintest flicker of a smile.

Then she coughed and drops of spittle flew from her mouth, flashing red in the light that streamed in from the window.

I scooted closer, put my hands on her upper arms. She was freezing, her body like marble.

‘Sasha, what’s wrong? What’s going on?’

She looked into my eyes and coughed again, blood droplets splattering my face.

My voice went up an octave as I spoke, panic mounting. ‘Sasha, what’s happened? What’s wrong with you?’

She made a guttural sound, trying to speak, but could only manage a single syllable. ‘She . . .’

‘What? She what? Do you mean Charlie?’

Sasha stared into my eyes and pulled the cushion away from her lap with great effort, as if it was heavier than a rock.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

‘Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. Sasha . . .’

There was a hole in her stomach. A gaping wound, dark blood trickling from it, down between her legs onto the upholstery. A wild, ridiculous thought entered my head, that not even Maria would be able to get those stains out, and at that moment Sasha toppled sideways, rasping, a line of blood running from her mouth, and I caught hold of her. She flopped. A dead weight.

‘Don’t touch her.’