‘All right,’ he says, his voice now strangely, almost eerily calm. My punishment hovers somewhere above us, out of sight but surely within reach. ‘Go back to your desk,’ he says. ‘Stay there until the police officer comes. Answer whatever questions they ask. If any journalists contact you, don’t speak to them. In the meantime, I need to make a few calls.’

I stand, gathering up Ms Jones’s file. The pages are ruffled, creased now. No longer pristine. It takes me two goes to open Abayomi’s door, my fingers slipping on the handle, unable to let myself out. I can feel his gaze on my back as I leave.

When I come back into our shared office, Emma stares at me, her mouth open.

‘What is it?’ she whispers. ‘What’s happened?’

I wonder if she listened outside the door and actually already knows. I feel as if she’s heard everything – as if my mistake is written like a brand across my forehead.

‘Nothing … just a … mix-up. The tenant wasn’t there. There was a problem, and now the police …’ I stop.

Emma is staring at me, her smartphone hovering in her hand, waiting for me to go on. But I can’t. I can’t bear to tell her and so instead I just take off my coat because suddenly it is stifling in here, and sit down at my desk, staring at the photograph of Charlie in its carved wooden frame, looking anywhere to avoid Emma’s gaze. When she switches on her computer, its cheerful little start-up tune feels so out of place. She clatters at the keyboard, her too-long nails getting in the way, same as ever, and I go on staring at my picture of Charlie until my eyes blur, just waiting until the police officer finally arrives.

It’s the female officer from before. I feel a rush of air into my lungs when I sense the sympathy in her face, and then my chest tightens again. It’s only because she doesn’t know yet what you did. But this is serious, this is the law, and I promise myself I will tell her everything.

She sends Emma out of the room while I’m interviewed. I picture her hovering in the staff kitchen, excluded from everything that’s going on, checking her Instagram while she waits.

‘She was three months behind with her rent,’ I begin. ‘We’d had to call the bailiffs. That’s who I was with at the flat. We kept knocking, and calling her name but there was no answer.’

The next moments come to me in flashes, disjointed, my mind flinching away from them like a hand from a hot stove.

I describe the sound of the radio playing and the sight of all the post piled up behind the door. ‘And then … and then when we saw … that she still had the chain on …’