We entered the bedroom and she instructed me to lie on my back on the bed. There were handcuffs attached to the bed frame. She snapped one over each wrist. Then she cuffed my ankles together. If I had been scared before, now I was terrified. I turned my head and saw that my phone was gone. She walked out of the room and came back carrying the holdall.

‘How did you get in?’ I asked. I needed to keep her talking, try to connect with her, talk her round. Find out what she wanted.

‘You keep a spare key in your bedside drawer,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I thought you meant for me to take it.’

I took a deep breath. ‘And the little bag of heroin. You put it in Charlie’s suit pocket.’

She smiled at me. ‘Clever, aren’t I? You’ll soon realise, Andrew, that all those other women – Sasha, Karen, Charlie – they’re nothing compared to me. I thought maybe Harriet was a threat too, but I could tell from your emails that you stopped caring about her a long time ago. I don’t think you ever loved her.’

As she talked, she put the holdall on the bed and removed some items from it. From my prostrate position I couldn’t see what they were, could only see a flash of silver, something catching the light.

‘You’ve read my emails?’ I said.

‘Hmm. All I needed was your iCloud password. Once I had that all I had to do was set it up on my iPad and I had access to everything, including all the texts you send and receive on your iPhone. Easy.’

‘But how did you get it? My password?’

She smirked. ‘I installed a piece of keystroke-recording software on Tilly’s computer. I wanted to keep an eye on her emails, see what she was saying about me. And when you stayed at Christmas you logged in to your iCloud emails and your Facebook. The software stored your passwords. That was the best Christmas present I ever had.’

I was stunned and horrified. With one password she could access everything because I used my Apple computer and phone, using my iCloud account, to send all my messages. And my Facebook password gave her even more access to my life.

‘And you deleted loads of my Facebook friends.’

‘Only the sluts.’ She smiled at me. ‘You didn’t notice me for a long time, did you? I know you merely thought of me as the poor sap who looked after your sister, who did the job you didn’t want to do.’

I opened my mouth but she put a finger to my lips. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t blame you. Some people are meant to be carers – like me – and others are supposed to be cared for. Like you. The first time I met you I knew that it was actually you I was supposed to look after.’