The officer takes my arm. She is trying to remove me, push me back outside, back into the corridor. There is a furious whispering, a room alive with the excitement of the case, of my misdemeanour. But they are light years away; I don’t hear them any more because we are staring at one other, our eyes locked.

There is only him – and my heart, it actually stops; it feels like it stops so I gasp suddenly with the shock of it. I think I even stagger. I feel a pain, a real pain deep in my belly, as visceral as if my insides are tearing away from themselves. I want to bend myself double, to curl up and hide – but how can I here, where I am watched? I am trapped.

And then he looks away.

So this is it, I think. There is just white light and noise around me that makes no sense, and then eventually they succeed. They get me back outside again.

The doors close in my face, and he is gone.

So this is what they call it. It is worse than I imagined: it is worse even than heartbreak and, God knows, I’ve felt that too.

This is worse than heartbreak. It is infinitely worse.

This is betrayal.

And then they were hustling me out and he was being led the opposite way. I tried to turn to see him but I couldn’t twist my head far enough as I was marched out, and the door was firmly shut behind me.

Where would they take him? Where would they try to hide him?

After a couple of false starts, I found an alley that led to the back of the court-house. I saw DS Montford come out and get into an unmarked Rover, and I guessed he’d be somewhere there too.

I ran across the car park and a security guard was calling, ‘Miss, miss,’ behind me in a strong Nigerian accent, but I ignored him and pushed the fire door open, almost falling as it took my weight.

He stood there, leaning against the wall quite calmly just inside the door, rolling a cigarette, and when he saw me, he narrowed those unreadable eyes at me. Blue as Hockney’s swimming pool; blue as Turner’s skies.

‘Hello, Rose Miller,’ he said, and my world crashed again. Blue as forget-me-nots.

He just stood there rolling a cigarette like he had no care in the world, not one.

The security guard lumbered up behind me. ‘Please, miss.’ He had a shiny bovine face. ‘You can’t be—’

Danny flashed something that he pulled from his jacket pocket, some kind of badge. ‘It’s OK. She’s with me.’

With me! I nearly laughed – except it would have killed me.

The reluctant guard sized us up. ‘OK, sir. If you are sure.’

‘Sure I’m sure. Cheers, pal.’

The guard lumbered off again.