“What about Tom?”

“He was released a few hours ago. Can’t really hold him for your disappearance when you’re sitting right here, can we?”

I need to see him. To tell him I’m sorry he got caught up in all of this. To make sure that he’s all right. That we’re all right. Oh God, what did Chris do? I’d had no idea he’d swapped the phones. But I should have guessed. Stupid, stupid, stupid! As if Chris would have let me continue to be in contact with Tom.

I am gripped by panic. Because what if? What if after everything, I don’t make it home? That there is no happily ever after. With Tom. Because thinking of him has been the only thing that kept me going through all of this. But what if he doesn’t want me?

DS Vicky Fonteyn comes to tell me I can go home. She finds me red-eyed and still sobbing as I think about what Chris might have said to Tom, and if Tom would even want anything to do with me now. Especially after he was arrested, and the things he was accused of. She assumes my state is the culmination of my sister’s death, and what Chris did to me, and the sheer momentousness of the whole thing. She offers to drive me home and I accept.

She doesn’t take a marked car and drives me home in her own. A turquoise-colored Vauxhall Corsa that smells faintly of smoke and wet dog. “Sorry,” she says, her arm sweeping around the car. “DS salary isn’t so great, and my dog stinks.”

I smile and laugh. It feels so surreal to be here, in such an ordinary car, among the detritus of a stranger’s life. “Would you like a fag?” she asks me. “I don’t mind if you smoke in the car.”

I take one greedily, pulling deeply and relishing the smoke drawing into my lungs. I close my eyes and allow the heady woozy sensation to engulf me. It’s over. Whatever happens. Whatever happens with Tom. I have done it. I am free.

After Vicky has undertaken a full sweep and made sure there is absolutely definitely no one hiding in the house waiting to jump out, she calls Tom for me.

I am making coffee for us in the kitchen and she comes to find me after they have spoken. Someone has been through the house and taken a plethora of fingerprints. There is sticky black residue on the kettle and the fridge door and so many other surfaces. I have tried to scrub it off with a sponge scourer but to no avail.

“Nail varnish remover,” Vicky says as she stands in the doorway watching me picking at the marks on the sugar tin. “Best thing for it.”

I wait for her to tell me what Tom said. I feel like a twelve-year-old again, waiting for my sister to run back from telling a boy I fancy him.

“He’s seen the story on the news,” says Vicky. “He’s on his way over now. I assumed that was OK?”