“Got your costume in there, darling?”

She became aware of the fact that she was standing outside a lap-dancing club. As she turned automatically in the direction of Strike’s office, her mobile rang. Without thinking, she answered it.

“Where the hell have you been?” said Strike’s angry voice in her ear.

She barely had time to be glad that he wasn’t Matthew before he said:

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day! Where are you?”

“On Tottenham Court Road,” she said, walking fast away from the still-jeering men. “Platinum’s only just gone inside and Two—”

“What did I tell you about not staying out after dark?”

“It’s well-lit,” said Robin.

She was trying to remember whether she had ever noticed a Travelodge near here. She needed somewhere clean and cheap. It must be cheap, because she was drawing on the joint account; she was determined not to spend more than she had put in.

“Are you all right?” asked Strike, slightly less aggressively.

A lump rose in her throat.

“Fine,” she said, as forcefully as she could. She was trying to be professional, to be what Strike wanted.

“I’m still at the office,” he said. “Did you say you’re on Tottenham Court Road?”

“I’ve got to go, sorry,” she said, in a tight, cold voice and hung up.

The fear of crying had become so overwhelming that she had to end the call. She thought he had been on the verge of offering to meet her, and if they met she would tell him everything, and she must not do that.

Tears were suddenly pouring down her face. She had no one else. There! She had admitted it to herself at last. The people they had meals with at weekends, the ones they went to watch rugby with: they were all Matthew’s friends, Matthew’s work colleagues, Matthew’s old university friends. She had nobody of her own but Strike.

“Oh God,” she said, wiping her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her coat.

“You all right, sweetheart?” called a toothless tramp from a doorway.

She was not sure why she ended up in the Tottenham, except that the bar staff knew her, she was familiar with where the Ladies was, and it was somewhere that Matthew had never been. All she wanted was a quiet corner in which she could look up cheap places to stay. She was also craving a drink, which was most unlike her. After splashing her face with cold water in the bathroom she bought herself a glass of red wine, took it to a table and pulled out her phone again. She had missed another call from Strike.

Men at the bar were looking over at her. She knew what she must look like, tear-stained and alone, her holdall beside her. Well, she couldn’t help that. She typed into her mobile: Travelodges near Tottenham Court Road, and waited for the slow response, drinking her wine faster than perhaps she ought to have done on a virtually empty stomach. No breakfast, no lunch: a bag of crisps and an apple consumed at the student café where Platinum had been studying were all she had eaten that day.