As I reach the window, she lifts up a hand and lays it flat on the glass. I lift mine and lay it flat on the other side, so our hands are palm to palm. She is trapped in the room in the same way I was trapped on Peterborough Railway Station. Behind her, I can see it is shabby and empty, no furniture but for an old sideboard against one wall, the carpet so threadbare it is completely worn through in places. There are two alcoves that look as though they once held shelves, screw-holes waiting to be filled in, rims of dirt and discoloured paint along the lines where the shelves once had been. What a desolate place to be trapped, I think. At least I had the staff and passengers to watch. All she can do is look out of the window at passers-by who never helped her and never will.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘What you sorry for?’ she replies.

‘I saw you in the window one day. If I had called the police you might be alive now.’

She shakes her head, slowly and sadly. ‘Oh right, love. No, you weren’t the only one and anyway I would have sent them away, did enough times.’

I stare at her and feel ineffably sad. We want so much to believe we are wrong and they give us just enough evidence for that.

‘What happened to you?’ she asks. ‘Did someone kill you?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but not in the way yours did, not in a way he could be done for.’

She nods. ‘Mine got four years. The judge said it was clear that his remorse was genuine. He’ll be out soon if he’s on his best behaviour. I heard the cleaners that the council sent round. One of them said, apparently she was a real nightmare. Pissed me off, that did. I’d give her nightmares alright if I could.’

We both stay like that for a while. ‘I thought love set me free,’ I say, ‘but it wasn’t love, at least, not the kind of love I thought.’

She nods and says, ‘I had a lot of friends when I met him. I gave them all up. I had a cousin I was really close to, he was gay but he still didn’t like me seeing him.’

‘I should have done something that day.’