‘No, Bobby was a money man. Funded my dad’s gym, sponsored him and Keston when they boxed for the county. Sent care packages to Dad in jail, all sorts. Probably cos Dad had something on him. Bobby was one dodgy fucker from what I’ve learned. Anyway, I found his number in the shoebox of trinkets I’d saved from my parents’ house before I sold it.’

‘Did you know him?’

‘I met him once, when I was six. Before Priory Gardens. We’d gone on holiday to Madeira and stayed at his hotel – me, Mum, Dad and Seren. I have flashes of memory from that week – me and Seren playing on pool noodles pretending they were horses. Eating cake with green bits in. Going down a hill in a big basket. A dead lizard in the bath. I didn’t kill it.’

‘Right, OK,’ says Freddie, turning back to his half-empty page.

‘So Bobby lived on Madeira and I called him to arrange it a few days before the end of the year.’

‘Just get here and I’ll sort everything,’ he’d told me. He didn’t even ask what I’d done – I said it was a Code Red and he understood. He was Northern. Sounded like Shaun Ryder’s asthmatic grandad.

‘And I’d like an American passport.’

Cue the sharp intake of breath, the clicking of tongue, the cogs whirring. ‘Right, well that’ll be one fifty.’

‘One hundred and fifty pounds? That’s reasonable.’

Cue the throaty laugh. ‘That’s grand, love. A hundred and fifty grand.’

‘GRAND?’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘One hundred and fifty GRAND? That’s nearly all my money!’

‘That’s what sanctuary costs nowadays. That includes a new passport, your place to stay while you recuperate from your surgery and yer—’

‘Surgery?’ I shrieked. ‘You mean I have to go full Mickey Rourke?’

‘If necessary. And we’re fast-tracking it, so that’s what it’s gonna cost.’

‘Fuck me pink and slice me sideways!’

‘Do a BACS transfer – get it done today, then it’ll come out before New Year. In’t meantime, get disconnected. Close all your digital doors.’

‘Yeah I have. Just my phone to go.’

‘Get rid. Cut up your credit cards ’n’all. We’ll set up the odd account to plant some disinformation. I can get that going today. Make it look like you’ve gone to Argentina or Uzbekistan.’

‘Why would I go to Uzbekistan?’

‘Don’t matter, does it? We’re planting false seeds. The police’ll be rattling every cage fo’ yer, including mine eventually.’

‘OK so I googled some flights from Exeter Airport and there’s one to Madeira leaving—’

‘—no, no, not a flight and not direct,’ he interrupted. ‘A cruise. That’s what you want. Anything leaving from Southampton via Madeira for two weeks or more. And book it for two people. You and your husband,’