‘I know you must have been terrified but most people would’ve called the cops straight away, in all fairness. Christ. The main thing is that you’re okay, I suppose, and you’ll have to make a full statement, but you needn’t do it today. The DPP will decide ultimately if there’s a case to answer. It’ll all depend on what happens next, if Gill follows through with the complaint, or withdraws it. It’ll be a swearing match between the two of ye, your word against his. He may just want to torture you for a while. We’ll see. Go on, make me a cup of coffee for God’s sake, and there had better be biscuits or I will scream because let me tell you, I am so fed up of you and Jeremy fucking Gill.’

‘No biscuits. Cheese and oatcakes are the best I can do.’

‘Jaysus. All right. Just coffee so,’ Sadie said. ‘Now tell me again what happened. And slowly. I want to take notes.’

I walked to the worktop, picked up the kettle.

‘Are you making me a cup of tea? Ah that’s lovely.’

I dropped the kettle.

‘You’re going to have to make the coffee,’ I said. ‘I have to sit down.’

Then I vomited into the sink.

‘You don’t need to dump the chair,’ Sadie said, after I had finished telling her what had happened. ‘From what you’ve told me, Gill was sitting in it for ten or fifteen minutes, max.’

‘I have to get it out of here. I’ll never sit in it again.’

I grabbed the back of the chair and started pulling it towards the stairs.

‘Come on,’ I said.

‘This is idiotic,’ Sadie said, but got up anyway, and started to help.

We half lifted, half dragged the chair down the stairs, marking the paintwork in places, and I couldn’t have cared less. On Barrack Street, I wrote a sign (‘Free to take away’), stuck it in a plastic folder and Sellotaped it to the leather. In the ten days since I’d met Sean Carney, I had lost a car and now the armchair. If things kept going like this, I’d have nothing left. And yet, the idea was a lot less terrifying than it might have been a couple of weeks before. When you were close to death, as I felt I had been that morning, possessions didn’t matter all that much.

‘Scary thing to happen, all right,’ Sadie said as we walked back along the lane.

‘Yeah.’

‘But he’s gone, at least for now. Chances are, he won’t pursue that complaint against you. If he does, you have a cross-complaint against him for assault. If any marks show, make sure you photograph them and go to your GP to put it on the record.’