‘I’ll do it.’ As I moved off, bowls in each hand, I turned back – Katrin was holding her phone in front of her. Was she angling it at me, to take a picture perhaps? I felt sweat up and down my back, under the plastic apron. I had to remember I was innocent. I had just been questioned as a witness, not arrested or charged. I knew nothing, I’d done nothing. Maybe Katrin didn’t know I’d been questioned after all, and I was just imagining it. She was a teenager, probably she didn’t watch the news. Probably she was just checking Facebook or something. But was it on social media, my name or my picture, as the person who’d found the body and run? I didn’t use that at all, for obvious reasons, but I knew how rumours could spread. If she put up a picture, would someone recognise me? Would the story come out – something I’d worried about for the entire time I’d lived here?

I turned my shoulder slightly to hide my face. I had learned that there was a certain amount of paranoia you just had to cope with, and I didn’t allow myself to go past that. It would be no life worth living if I did.

‘Rachel?’ For a moment, I didn’t answer. Who was Rachel? ‘Rachel, love?’

That was me. Oh God. I hadn’t reacted, and that chilled me, because it had been a long time since I’d made a mistake like that, failed to answer to the name I called myself. I straightened up from setting down the last few bowls, and Marilyn was standing there, a teenage boy, tall and gangling, beside her.

‘Oh! Sorry, I was miles away.’

She gave me a sympathetic smile. ‘Can you work with Callum today, show him the feeding protocol?’

I had seen the boy around the place without really realising it – I did my best to keep a distance from the interns. They reminded me too painfully of myself at that age, so sure that life would not hurt me. That made three of them this term, Katrin, this boy, and another one called Tom I’d also seen about, tall and cocky.

‘Hello, Callum.’ I tried to sound normal, gave him a smile. ‘I’m Rachel.’ Keep saying it and it might be true.

He ducked his head and muttered, ‘Hi, yeah, I know.’ Typical taciturn teenager. He was a foot taller than me, dressed in a hoody and jeans. He’d be good-looking when his skin cleared up, I thought.

‘You like dogs?’ I indicated the ones behind me in their pens, their hopeful eyes and wagging tails.

‘Yeah.’ He cleared his throat, his voice wavering, as often happens at that age. ‘Yeah, I do.’