‘You’re wrong.’ She stared back at him but he was the one waiting now. And she could tell he wasn’t going to speak, not another word – on this or anything else – till she’d given him the reason why he should trust her. Suddenly, this film – and her entire future – was resting on telling him about her past.

She felt her heart contract, hold and collapse into a gallop. Even just the memories of it were enough to put her body in flight mode. ‘. . . You make assumptions about me,’ she began, her voice quivering with resentment. ‘You think you know what I am. I look a certain way. I sound a certain way. And maybe I am everything you assume – but I’m also not. Yes, I grew up privileged: lived in an eight-bedroom house, went to a top school, had ponies . . . I was spoilt and lucky and sheltered. All those things – until I was fourteen and my father was accused of fraudulent trading. He was jailed for seven years and we lost our home . . .’

She saw a frown buckle his brow.

‘. . . My mum and brother and I ended up living in a one-bedroom council flat on the nineteenth floor of a tower block. It was all we could get. Mum gave me and Tom the bedroom so we could sleep and still be able to study in our new school; she slept on the sofa; the walls were so thin you could punch a hand through them; there were crack dealers in the playground . . .’ She stared back at him, refusing to show how terrifying it had been: the constant fear, the permanent cold, the light and noise around the clock . . . ‘Don’t think I expect or need your pity, because I don’t,’ she said quickly, her voice stony. ‘We adapted to the change in circumstances quite well, all things considered.’ Her mouth became smaller as her tension increased. ‘. . . What got me was that my father never had a fair hearing. The press had tried him long before the jury – they took pictures of our old house, the tennis court, the pool, the cars . . . Only when his former colleague was arrested, doing exactly the same thing, five years later, did anyone accept what my father had been telling them all along. That he’d been set up.’

He was watching her closely, like a cat tracking a mouse. ‘Did he get out?’