I wasn’t there because I think I’m Picasso anyway.

‘How come you got to go outside yesterday?’ Lucy asked.

It was unusually quiet as everyone laboured over their masterpieces, so I took care to keep my voice down, hoping that Lucy would take the hint and do the same. ‘It was a police thing,’ I said.

‘About Kevin?’

‘It’s not something I can really talk about.’

‘Oh, OK then.’ She went back to her picture.

‘But, yeah.’

Lucy nodded, slashing her pen from side to side on the paper, which she told me later was how you shaded things in. ‘Are you going to be working on the case, then?’

‘I am working on it.’ I looked down at what I’d managed so far. It was going pretty well. ‘I’m working on it now.’

I knew I had plenty of time, so I spent as much of it watching our substitute therapist as I did putting my felt-tips to good use. Mostly she kept busy with whatever she was drawing, but she was watching us too, because it wasn’t like we were art students or anything and a pencil can do a lot of damage in the wrong hands.

In here, almost anything can.

A plastic fork, a broken guitar, a pillow . . .

At the table in front of us, Ilias suddenly screwed up the piece of paper he’d been working on and threw it away angrily. He put his hand up like a schoolboy and waited for Debbie to look up and see him.

‘Can I draw a vagina?’

‘If that’s what you want,’ Debbie said.

‘Can I have it when you’ve finished?’ Bob asked.

The sun was streaming through the windows and that pissed me off quite a lot, because I’d really enjoyed that half an hour outside with Banksy the day before. The being outside part of it, anyway.

It was hot, so it was hard to concentrate.

I knew that I had to, though; that I needed to make a good job of this. I tried not to spend every second willing the mobile in my pocket to ring and then, when I did finally feel it buzzing against my leg, I tried not to kick the table over when it turned out to be fucking Sophie.

Lovely 2 talk to u the other day. Miss u so much.

A sad-faced emoji.