I shouldn’t have run away, I know. Things might not have gone so badly for me if I’d just behaved normally. But that would have required my brain to take it in, to accept I had once again been the person to find a dead body. The proverbial dog-walker, always first on the scene. I had a talent for it, it seemed.

It was around eleven when the doorbell finally went. I took my time. Rinsed my plate in the sink, tidied my hair in the small mirror I’d found in the British Heart Foundation shop. Slipped my feet into ballet pumps, my toes finding their own impressions in the leather. Outside, black-clad figures, a buzz of radios. The police. Gentler in this country, at least. No guns. The bell went again. I opened the door.

They were quite polite about it. Two officers, a man and a woman, neither a day over thirty. ‘Rachel Caldwell?’

‘Yes?’ My heart was hammering in my chest, but I tried to keep my voice steady.

‘We understand you walked your dog in the woods earlier?’ Over their shoulders, I could see that a small crowd had gathered near the edge of the trees. I recognised a few of my neighbours from the nearby cottages. I knew not to lie – someone would have seen me, it’s a small town, and I took Brandy on the same path each morning, both of us creatures of habit.

‘Well, yes, I do most days. Is something wrong?’

‘I’m afraid there’s been . . . an incident. Would you mind if we came in to ask you a few questions?’ That was the woman, young and pretty, with red hair and a cinnamon-sprinkle of freckles over her nose. Would I mind, she’d said. How nice to pretend I had a choice.

‘I didn’t see anything,’ I said. They couldn’t prove I’d found it – I couldn’t yet think about it as a person – and it was too hard to explain why I had seen it but run away. Normal people don’t do that.

Stupid of me, to lie so early on. I should have said nothing, not until they actually arrested me at least. Got a lawyer right away, watched my every word. Me of all people, I should have known that. But I didn’t want to look guilty. I thought I could play dumb. Stupid, stupid. The two officers exchanged a look. The man – not much more than a boy, to my eyes – said, ‘Well. If we can just come in, hopefully we can clear a few things up.’