‘He’s on his way, darling. He’s on a plane back from his conference in Singapore – he came as soon as he heard. He’ll be here later.’

They were going off-piste. Patrick tried to steer them back. ‘So, Georgia, why did Jerome want to hurt you?’

She moaned again. ‘I owe him money. He . . . gave me some drugs to sell and . . .’ her voice became almost inaudible, ‘I left them on the bus and he’s been after me for the money.’

Georgia couldn’t quite believe this was happening. A couple of years ago she used to have fantasies about being in hospital, leg in plaster after perhaps a car crash, or an incident in which she had rescued a baby from a burning building or something. In her imagination she would lie there while all her friends and family crowded around her bed, cooing with sympathy. One Direction would come and visit her themselves, in person, and bring flowers because she was a heroine. Zayn would fall in love with her and they’d become a couple. She’d be in the papers.

But now it was really happening, this was the last place she wanted to be, and she wouldn’t want any of her friends, and certainly not One Direction, to see her lying like this, bandaged up like an Egyptian mummy. Every part of her body hurt, but particularly her face and her belly. She couldn’t move.

And now her mother was staring at her with the sort of horror she had never seen on her face before, ever, as though she, Georgia, was an alien freshly landed from Mars. Who said that telling the truth was a better option? She had just confessed to the drugs. To Jerome trying to kill her. Oh my God, she thought. Now I’ve grassed him up, he’s definitely going to kill me.

But then a fresh wave of pain reverberated through her body. Her face was going to be scarred for ever – how could it not be, when she could feel the stab and itch of every stitch holding her cheeks together? It felt as though there were hundreds of them. She was ruined. So what if Jerome killed her? She would kill herself before he got to her. There was no way she was going to live being a scarred freak that everyone felt sorry for. No way.

Then she felt a stab of something equally sharp: regret. She couldn’t top herself without confessing what she knew about Frankie. She had to say something. Surely things couldn’t get any worse? The nice detective was sitting gazing at her with his pencil poised over his notebook. If she didn’t tell him now what she knew, then she might never get the chance. Alice would never speak to her again either way, but so what? She, Georgia, wouldn’t be around, so what did it matter?