Now she can’t sleep anywhere. Now she bleaches the kitchen instead of marking papers. Now she digs the eyes out of greening potatoes instead of turning them into clocks. She used to command her class like a conductor, could make the children gasp and cheer with her chemistry set. Now she commands a cleaning rota that no one except her seems to care about.

‘Maybe I’ll meet with the police next week,’ she says finally, her jaw tense.

Tess knows she’s lying. ‘You remember the old saying, Lizzie, “Why put off till tomorrow what could be done today?” It’s been a month!’ Tess sing-songs and smiles, and Lizzie thinks how manipulative she is under all that Mary Poppins-ness.

‘Next week would be better. I’m still settling Lenny into school.’

‘I see,’ Tess says, in a voice that says she obviously doesn’t see at all. They have a silent, passive-aggressive conversation through body language, Tess tilting her head, Lizzie shuffling her feet. Finally, after an offer of tea and a quick perusal of Lizzie’s room – under the pretence of checking the radiator – Tess surrenders. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ She stomps out in remedial-looking shoes, leaving the door open.

Lizzie shuts it behind her and sighs into the silence. Most of the women keep their doors ajar and invite one another in for a chat. They congregate in the corridor before EastEnders and Coronation Street. ‘You coming down, hon? Want a cuppa? I’ve got some choccy in the fridge.’ They gather in clusters, like wasps around a jam jar, discussing developments in their court cases and vowing they’ll ‘not let that bastard take another strip’ from them.

One of them knocked on Lizzie’s door the first couple of nights. They wanted to know if she was like them, if her story was as bad, or worse.

Lizzie knew she came across as cold when she said no. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t help it.

‘Ask Lizzie a science question and she’s grand,’ her mother had said to her primary-school teacher on Lizzie’s first day. ‘Socializing? Not so much.’

Her mother didn’t know the name for her daughter’s detached, frustrated outlook on life. Her fascination with numbers and trains. She just thought she had a difficult child, probably due to the 11.30 a.m. nip of sherry she never stopped taking through her pregnancy, with two Embassy cigarettes, or maybe that fall in the seventh month when she was running for the bus. Lizzie’s mother was in denial and defended her only child with unassailable vehemence. Guilt is a wonderful decision-maker.