I knew it didn’t help him – I could always hear the hope in his voice as he picked up. But I needed to talk to someone who knew who I was and still thought I was good. I realised I should have taken a picture of the fridge with the letters on it as proof, before messing them up, but after so many years falling behind in technology, I had never quite got up to speed. Marilyn had once laughed at the fact my phone’s photo reel was entirely empty. Like a sociopath, she said. She was joking, I think. If only I’d thought to buy one of those fancy new security cameras, then I would have known who was doing this. Stupid me and my low-tech life.

I listened to the phone ring, then Jeremy’s thick voice answering.

‘Hello?’

‘Jer? It’s me.’

I had trained him years ago not to say my name on the phone. ‘Babe?’ The tentative hope, the tremble of emotion. ‘Oh my God! It’s been . . .’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I was just so settled here, I didn’t want to rock the boat. I’ve been thinking of you.’ That was a lie. But I had never quite been able to let my ex-husband go, even when the divorce was finalised. It was too addictive, the way he looked at me, as if I was pure and good.

‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘I miss you.’

I didn’t need to ask if he’d met someone else, been out at all. Staying in every night running various online forums about high-profile murders wasn’t good for the social life.

‘Not really, no,’ I said. ‘Jer – something’s happened.’

‘Did someone identify you?’ He was instantly alert – he had helped me develop my escape plan when I was first released. I think he enjoyed it, with shades of the SAS books he liked to read. Jeremy would not survive a day on the run, I knew that.

‘No. Not yet. But I’ve been accused of something.’ I outlined what had happened – the wife of the man I was seeing had been murdered, how I’d found her dead body but run away, lied to the police about it. The scarf I didn’t remember wearing, found nearby. He listened in what I assumed was stunned silence.

Then he said, quietly: ‘I didn’t know you were seeing someone.’

‘That’s what you take from it? Jer, I’m facing a murder charge!’