‘It happened once down at the Pool,’ I said, still in some sort of continuous denial feedback loop. ‘Sister Oesterious. They didn’t hit her hard enough. Covered in fish heads when she came back, she was – and the same with Carmen Miranda, of course.’

It was an off-the-cuff remark as I didn’t have a strategy, I was just flanneling wildly in the vague hope that providence would deliver me from my current dilemma.

Which it kind of did.

‘Carmen Miranda?’ said Jonesy, suddenly looking concerned.

‘Yes,’ I said, seizing on the initiative. ‘You said you’d thumped her, but I saw her wandering down the road. She had a fruit hat on and a gown and everything.’

‘Always a star,’ mused Jonesy, ‘when did you see her?’

‘This morning.’

‘Well,’ she said, looking out of the window, where there was little to see but a wall of whirling snowflakes, ‘perhaps her homing instincts will have kicked in. Now: I want your badge and your Bambi.’

‘Look,’ I said, handing them over, ‘if we’re talking due process: yes, I thought I’d retired Birgitta, but if Miranda’s still alive then this sort of thing happens. Besides, what evidence do you have that I am anything but an innocent party in all this?’

‘Let me see,’ said Jonesy. ‘First, you’re an exceptionally bad liar. I mean exceptionally. Transparent, almost. Second, you— no, we’ll skip reasons two to seven, because reason eight is quite enough all on its own: Birgitta drew this of you.’

She held up one of Birgitta’s sketches. It was me, with her, here in the bathroom of her apartment. She had drawn it from memory, but it might easily have been from life. The picture was of me washing her hair while she sat naked in the tub, just before I’d given up her long black tresses as a lost cause and cut them off. In the picture, Birgitta didn’t look vacant, she looked frustrated. Perhaps that’s what her inner emotion was right now.

I felt my eyes well up as the true and utter uselessness of the position became clear, and how poorly I had fared in my efforts to keep her safe. I’d protected her for the grand total of nineteen hours and seventeen minutes.

Not even a single day.

‘Can you explain this?’ said Jonesy, showing me the sketch again.

‘It’s not what it looks like.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘You know what it looks like to me?’ she said. ‘It looks like someone tending to someone else’s needs. Someone who can’t look after themselves. It looks a lot like empathy, Wonky. What say you?’

‘What?’

‘Empathy. Big on empathy, are you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, surprised by her understanding, ‘that’s exactly what it is. Empathy.’

‘I love you, Charlie,’ said Birgitta.