‘I called the ambulance, the Mackenzies . . . I can’t really remember, it was all such a blur. Archie was taken to hospital and put in a medically induced coma. He’d hit his head pretty badly. And then . . . they said I did it.’ I remember the fear, the shock that rattled my bones as I was arrested and questioned for hours on end. ‘He’d hit his head so badly that his skull was fractured, and he’d suffered such extensive damage that the doctors had no choice but to turn off his life support machine – and the police thought I was responsible. So did his parents.

‘There were other bruises on him, all over his body, that they said couldn’t have been caused by the fall. I was the one in the frame. I knew I hadn’t hurt him – I loved that little boy so much – but I had seen Gabby grab him roughly when he wouldn’t do as he was told. I tried to tell them that, but why would they believe me? The English nanny who would rather sit outside, drinking and smoking, leaving a tiny boy all alone inside?’ I let out a huff of bitter laughter. ‘The police couldn’t make it stick – they could say that I had been negligent, but they couldn’t definitively say that I had pushed Archie on purpose. It was the media, and the people who lived there who crucified me. I had no other option but to come back to England.’

‘And that’s when you changed your name?’

‘I didn’t feel I had a choice – who would employ me? Who would give me the time of day if they knew I was Charlie Seddon? I haven’t even told my mum I’m home. She still thinks I’m in Scotland working in a bar, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t want her to know I was here, looking after a child again . . . I just wanted to protect her – I thought if she doesn’t know I’m here, then she doesn’t have to see me, she doesn’t have to explain anything to anyone. She got terrible abuse when people found out I was her daughter.’ I drain the last of the water, pushing the glass away from me, a single tear dropping onto the formica table in front of me. ‘I thought the best thing to do was become someone else, so I bleached and cut my hair, dropped some weight and changed my name. Anna Cox was on my nannying course years ago. I knew via Facebook that she’d given it all up to get married, so why not use her name for some references? I never meant any harm, not to anyone.’

‘That’s quite a story,’ DC Bishop says, her face devoid of any expression. I have no idea whether she believes me, or what she’s thinking about it all.