Later, I am in my room, hiding from Fran after our conversation outside, if I’m honest, thinking over everything I have said to the police and wondering if there was anything more I could tell them, anything else that would point them in the right direction. I feel desperate to make amends for lying to Fran about my identity, desperate to make her understand how I really feel about Laurel before she asks me to leave. I can hear her pacing above me in the room she shares with Dominic, and the low murmur of her voice as she talks on the phone, presumably to her mother again, and I wonder if she is telling her mother that I’m not really Anna Cox, or whether she is voicing her concerns about Dominic, the way she did to me in the church.

I can’t help but feel that he is hiding something, and the idea that he knows where Laurel is makes me go hot and cold, leaving a thick, heavy ball in my stomach, as I slowly fold T-shirts and sweaters and place them gently in my suitcase. There is no sign of Dominic yet, and I wonder how much longer the police will be talking to him for, that’s if the police still have him at the station. I wouldn’t put it past him now to go to Pamela, or some other willing woman, on leaving the station rather than come back home and face Fran’s wrath.

I look up as my door is slowly pushed open and Fran stands there, her face unreadable.

‘You’re packing,’ she states, and I carry on folding a cardigan, fussily shaking the fabric out to make it fold neatly, avoiding eye contact.

‘I thought you’d want me to leave. I know I shouldn’t have lied, but . . . it was too complicated to explain when I first met you and then I got attached to Laurel, and I was worried you would fire me if I told you the truth . . .’ I trail off as I realise that she isn’t shouting or screaming at me, she isn’t telling me to leave.

‘So, your name is really Charlie Seddon, not Anna Cox?’ she says, and I nod. ‘Archie Mackenzie died while he was in your care – do you see how that looks, now I know the truth about who you are?’

‘That’s why I couldn’t tell you who I was – that’s the only reason I lied, I swear. I promise you, Fran, I never hurt Archie. I left him alone for the shortest time, while I thought he was asleep. It was an accident.’ I feel my eyes well up again. ‘I’ve never left Laurel, not even for a second, not after what happened to Archie.’