I could smell the male detective’s BO as I went in. He glared at me. ‘There she is.’

‘Um – hi.’

What was it this time? Were they about to tell me I was free to go?

‘Let me ask you something,’ he growled. ‘You think you’re smart?’

I was confused. ‘Well – I don’t know. A normal amount, I guess.’

He slammed his hand on the table, hard, making me jump. ‘You think it’s smart to lie to the police?’

‘I haven’t lied.’

‘Oh yeah? How d’you think it looks when you say it’s the gardener, and we go arrest him and he has a cast-iron alibi?’

‘He does?’

I was pleased at first. At least José could escape from the whirlpool that was dragging me under.

‘Like you don’t know. Mondays he works for another client, three miles away – very famous actor, you’d know him if I said the name. Mowed the lawn all day, actor’s wife never took her eyes off him. Couldn’t have been him, and now we look like a bunch of anti-Mexicans, arresting the guy.’

I later found out it was a particularly brutal arrest, that José’s teenage son had been punched in the face by a cop and ended up in hospital. At the time I just said, ‘He’s not Mexican. And I never said it was him – I was just giving suggestions, trying to help.’

‘Suggestions.’ He turned to the female detective with a nasty chuckle in his throat. ‘You think we’re in the business of suggestions? This is a murder enquiry. A little kid is dead.’

‘I know that!’ I flashed. ‘I’m the one who looked after her, not you. You think I don’t care? I’m trying to help, but you won’t listen!’

He leaned on the table and stared into my eyes, so I could smell his bad breath. ‘You better start coming up with some better answers, Mary Poppins. Cos you’re looking at the lethal injection, as things stand.’

I almost laughed with hysteria, it was so absurd. I was a teenage girl from Watford, and this was like something out of The Green Mile. I ignored the tick of panic in my stomach. This would all be sorted out soon, and this detective would have to make a formal apology, and maybe they’d even have to pay me compensation for the lost time, the distress I was in.

‘Look, I don’t know. Did you try to find Marietta, the maid? She might know something.’

He narrowed his eyes at me. ‘You think we didn’t think of that? Takes time.’