The woman standing beside the Drama Society notice board under the arch in Trinity College doesn’t look like what I imagine a madame, a female pimp, brothel owner, procurer of women, whatever, to look like. She’s a mumsy librarian with glasses, short, dark, sensible hair cut in a neat bob, comfortable flats, sans make-up, somewhere in her forties. Maybe she’s wearing lacy suspenders underneath her pencil skirt, although that’s about as likely as Sister Rita wearing them. She nods at me as I approach and we walk in silence along the back of Dame Street.

‘I’m Sammy,’ I say after a while, just for something to say. She doesn’t return the pleasantry, and I realise that the piece of paper Sandra gave me didn’t have a name on it, just a number and a blank where the name should be. I guess that’s right. An anonymous set-up.

‘How old are you?’ she asks, after a while.

‘Fifteen,’ I say, all delighted with myself, expecting her to clap her hands in glee, what joy, a schoolgirl.

Instead, she stops and says, ‘Sorry, that’s not my thing.’

I could easily pass for seventeen or eighteen, bit of make-up, right gear; I tell her this. ‘And Sandra recommended you to me.’

She looks at me sideways. ‘Is there anyone looking for you?’

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘My da’s dead and my mam’s a junkie, doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, won’t even notice I’m not there,’ which is stretching the truth to beyond taut, so that it might snap back at me. Even to my ears I sound like a raging liar. Reign in it, Sammy – the wide-boy act.

She studies me sideways. ‘Friends?’

I shake my head. ‘Free as a bird.’

‘What about your school?’

I hadn’t thought of that one, but no thinking required really. ‘I started mitching three years ago, when Mam turned really psycho. No one’s tried to contact me in months. They’ve given up.’ Mam. Where did that come from? And the accent. Is she falling for it?

‘That easily?’ she asks.

A silence descends that I wouldn’t exactly describe as companionable as we continue to walk up lanes and alleys that are unfamiliar to me. We arrive at a tall Georgian building with the biggest door and the biggest knocker I’ve ever seen. Fi-Fi-Fo-Fum. There’s no number outside.

‘I’ll show you to a room. You can have a bath and some food and then come downstairs and we’ll have a chat. You’ll find me in here,’ she points to a room just inside the front door. ‘The kitchen’s down there,’ she gestures to stairs leading down the back, off the main corridor. ‘I’ll leave you a plate.’