Still, he might have slipped up over the years, said something to the wrong person. I’d never been given a new legal identity, simply started using my married name and my middle one. It’s not illegal to call yourself something different.

‘You don’t have anything with my name or address written down? An address book or something?’

He scoffed. ‘Of course not. Who has address books nowadays?’

‘Right. There’s nothing you can think of?’

Mildly affronted, he ticked it off on his fingers. ‘I only have your number in my phone, saved as initials, and I only ever text you, then delete it right after. I never print out anything and I don’t actually know your address, remember.’

That was true. I had never given it to him, sticking to digital communication only. As far as I knew, he had never been north of Watford Gap before this.

‘I’m sorry. I’m just trying to think of every possibility.’

‘I understand,’ he said soothingly. ‘But someone has found you, by the looks of it. So we have to work out who that could be, then prove that they – what? – murdered this Anna woman to frame you?’

A short silence. ‘It sounds crazy when you say it like that,’ I said sheepishly. ‘Why would anyone commit murder just to get back at me?’ I thought of the depths of hate that would require, and a shiver ran through me.

‘Crazy things happen,’ he said. ‘We know that. And you didn’t do it, so someone else did.’

I almost loved Jeremy for that, and not for the first time I wished I could have been happy with just that, with the small things I had dreamed of during my years in prison. A man who believed me, a door I could open, blue sky over my head. By asking for more, leaving his protection and starting this new life, had I opened myself up to yet more doom?

Jeremy was staying with me, of course. The B&Bs round here cost a fortune and got booked up months ahead, all artisan biscuits and rainfall showers. He was cheerful about sleeping on my sagging sofa: ‘You know me, could sleep on a log if I had to!’ So that little bit of awkwardness was passed. I didn’t want to even entertain the idea of sharing a bed.