I reach for the elastic band, but there’s nothing there so I press my thumbnail into the soft part of my palm to stop myself from shouting that I’m nothing like him. He lifts his hands and points a finger at me.

“But there’s one big difference between us. You have the power to tell the world the truth.”

“Simon, what is the truth?”

But he squeezes his eyes shut and starts shaking his head again, back and forth, back and forth, chattering nonsense, and then he starts ripping at his hair with angry fists. He stands up quickly and leans across the table, so close I can almost see the anger, the pain, boiling inside him.

“The truth is . . . the truth is that I don’t remember what the truth is . . . that’s all . . . I don’t remember,” he shouts, then starts to shake with sobs. I hear the key turn in the lock. Simon raises his hands to his face and, turning away from the cameras, wipes his face in the heel of his hands, but as he does so, he lifts his hand a little and I see his mouth is fixed in a hard line. He mumbles those two syllables again, but this time just clear and loud enough for me to hear.

“The twins.”

“You could have warned me he’s fucking lost it.” I’m pacing, almost shaking with adrenaline, when Upton walks into the interview room. I sound angrier than I feel, taut as a wire. The twins. What did he mean?

Upton holds her hands up. “I know. You’re right.”

“So why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“We had a choice: risk you being pissed off or risk you behaving differently around him. Look, two doctors have confirmed he’s coming out of a psychotic breakdown and paranoid. He self-harms if anyone says he’s unwell; it’s like torture to him. We wanted you to treat him as normally as possible. That’s what he craves and that’s why we think he asked for you. You treated him normally when you met before and you did again. We are trying to learn from the Adam Rufton case, we don’t want to make the same mistakes again.”

“Adam Rufton was murdered because you lot didn’t listen.”

“And I’m working as hard as I can to try to make sure that never happens again. I want to listen. I want to know how you knew Simon had been calling Megan.”

I can’t let Upton know I’ve read Grace’s diary, so I try to sound casual. “If my wife kept me away from our son I’d be calling every minute of the day to try to see him.” My shoulders ache as I shrug. “It was an educated guess.”

Upton keeps her eyes on me, nods slowly—she looks like she’s working hard, trying to figure out why I’m lying.

“He’s clearly unwell. What’s going to happen to him now?”

“He’s going to be transferred to a secure psychiatric hospital immediately. I’m going to keep questioning him there as much as I can. I need to make sure he doesn’t get so stressed that he suppresses what happened to Grace.”