Jeremy, to be fair, had always been on my side, and would boot people off his site if they tried to say I did kill the Safrans. I thought he capitalised on it a little too much sometimes, our relationship, a whiff of real scandal, having been married to a convicted (then unconvicted) mass murderer. But he was good to me, and I couldn’t afford to turn away anyone who cared about me. I had so few.

Jeremy was still banging on about this other case, something about bloodied tissues, as the taxi arrived at my cottage, and he staggered out with all his files and bags. I unlocked the door, Brandy emitting a soft whuff from the kitchen but not running to greet me, seeing me with a strange man. I had picked her up from Marilyn’s the evening before, too embarrassed to come in for the tea she’d offered. She must know I’d been arrested over the murder of her friend, and even if I hadn’t been charged, surely she would have wondered. If I had actually done it.

‘Jer. Please. I really need your help, I’m losing my mind here.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. So this woman Anna, you knew her?’

‘Not really. She was married to my – this man I’ve been seeing. They were split up, but not divorced yet.’

‘Oh.’

I busied myself with the kettle to avoid looking at his face. He knew, of course, that I saw people from time to time, and we’d been divorced for more than ten years, but he didn’t like to hear about it all the same. I wished he would meet someone. He was seeing a woman from the Murder Squad forum for a while, but they had fallen out over their interpretations of a piece of evidence in the Madeleine McCann case, and their relationship never really recovered.

I said, ‘Trouble is, people saw her yell at me in the street last week. And the rest. Me dating her husband, running away from the scene. They haven’t charged me yet, though – that’s a good sign, right? That they let me go?’

Jeremy flopped on to my sofa. Brandy, who saw this as her place, retreated in a huff to her crate. ‘Dunno. What they do, see, is they watch you. Build a case. If they charge too soon the whole thing can fall apart. Remember the Soham inquiry? They knew he was acting well suss, putting himself into the investigation, far too helpful, but they’d no proof. So they just watched him, for weeks.’

Was this supposed to be comforting? ‘But I didn’t do it, Jeremy! So we have to figure out who did.’

‘Right, right. You think someone’s found you then? From the past?’

‘It looks that way, doesn’t it? You never . . . ?’

‘No! God, no, I’m very careful. I would never tell anyone your new name.’