Robin feels his hands ball into fists, remembering the feeling from that night. It was worse than the thought that Trevor Stevens was alive and happy – knowing that he was doing it again, that he would kill someone else.

‘Why didn’t you arrest him?’ Freya says, the question he’s asked himself so many times since.

‘I… I don’t know,’ Robin replies. ‘I told myself I should go with him, see what he’d do next. Potentially make it worse for him. But I think, in my heart, I just wanted him dead.’ The stark truth. Out loud. ‘I didn’t want him back in prison, or to have his licence revoked. I wanted him dead.’

‘What did you do?’ Freya whispers.

Robin keeps on talking. He describes speaking to Stevens in the petrol station, laughing and joking, then mentioning he’d been in the army. He’d known Stevens had a history there, and that he wouldn’t hesitate to give a lift to a fellow squaddie. He’d followed him out to the car, still unsure what was going to happen.

‘And he was driving fast. Much, much too fast,’ Robin says. He feels his chest tighten at the memory. Remembering kicking the Jack Daniel’s bottle in the footwell by his feet, then the sudden exhilaration, knowing what he was going to do. ‘So I reached over and grabbed the wheel.’

He remembers the rain, barely being able to see out of the windscreen as they careered down that road. He remembers Stevens with his foot hard to the floor, watching as the speedometer went past eighty. Feeling the car shake, the rumble of the wheels, then the loss of control as the tyres lost their grip.

Freya takes a sharp breath in. ‘But you could have been killed,’ she says, open-mouthed.

Robin clenches his jaw, then swallows, willing away the tightness in his throat. ‘That was the plan, Freya.’

And then, to his dismay, he realises he’s crying. He puts his hands over his face, trying to stop the flood of emotion, but it’s too much. He can’t help the great gulping sobs as he leans over the table. He feels a gentle arm round his shoulders, and slowly, slowly feels it abate. He knows Freya is still watching him, but he can’t look at her: the shame, the feeling of worthlessness, of guilt, is too much. He feels that one look from him and she’d know it all.

‘I woke up. In a huge amount of pain, but alive.’

The smell of petrol, damp leaves. The creak of crumpled metal sinking into new positions. And the sudden panic, knowing he needed to get out of there.