She says nothing, simply waits for me to continue. I picture her in the house I grew up in, miles away from here, her dressing gown tied tightly around her waist, standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil as she did so many times before when I sneaked in late. She was always waiting for me, waiting to hear what I had to say. I don’t know when that changed. Was it when I decided to skip out on a law degree and train to be a nanny? When I decided I was being stifled and I ran away to Scotland, to be with a lad I barely knew? Or when I was accused of killing a small boy, the press and the public picking over every aspect of our lives?

I start to speak, the words tumbling over one another. ‘Do you remember, Mum, what it was like? When you came up to Killin, when they first said that I did it?’

‘I remember,’ she says, her voice heavy. ‘Of course, I remember.’

‘The way people reacted – spitting at me in the street, shouting and swearing at me, my face on the front page of the newspaper every day.’ My voice breaks, but I push on. ‘That day . . . the day they said I could go, that they believed I didn’t do it . . . the day you came and met me . . . that man pushed you, told you that you were the mother of a murderer and that we’d both rot in hell. That was the day I knew everything had changed, nothing was ever going to be the same again if I came home.’

‘You didn’t have to lie to me though, Charlie, you didn’t have to pretend that you were still in Scotland. You could have come home, I would have taken care of you.’ My mother sniffs, and I know that I’ve made her cry, again, the way I have so many times before.

‘I couldn’t . . . I felt ashamed, I suppose. I know I didn’t do it, and the police, the media, they eventually agreed that I was innocent but it wouldn’t have mattered to anyone else. How could I come back and live at home, knowing the way people would react? The things they’d say to you? Or even do to you?’ It was bad enough before, people threw eggs at my parents’ house, vandalised my dad’s car, refused to serve them in the local shop.