Another silence. All I can hear is the bang of my own heart, the panting of my own breath. For a moment I think she’s dropped the line entirely.

‘Chloe?’

‘Yes, I’m still here,’ comes her voice. ‘And – yes – you could.’

After the call, I feel strangely elated. Buoyed up. Focused. I look at the photo of Charlie on my desk and force the tension out of my chest.

I have another visit to do this morning: a pair of tenants, and reports by their neighbours that they have vandalized their flat. I need to go and inspect the damage, start to make an estimate of costs. It’s one of the worst kinds of jobs I could have, but today, even that doesn’t bother me.

The tenants are out – in fact, I think they’ve done a runner – and as I walk round the property, I feel a strange sense of detachment. The place is in a terrible state: cracks and holes in the walls, burns on the carpet. In one bedroom, a door has been completely ripped off. I have no idea what happened here: a fight, a bad trip, a blind fit of rage? It isn’t for me to guess, only to note everything that I see, marking it against the neat inventory I’ve made.

It takes me a little over an hour, but when I’m done I head back to the office, relieved. A difficult duty well executed, a sad job well done. As I reach the bottom of Brixton Hill, a bus drives past me through the puddle at the pavement’s edge, and I jump aside to avoid getting splashed. As I do, I have a sense of someone turning their head towards me through the window, but by the time I look up, the bus is already behind me, lumbering away up the hill. I pull my coat more tightly around me, against the damp wind that whips around my neck. I’ve forgotten my scarf and my neck feels bare. Little sparks flash at the corners of my vision.

As I cross at the pedestrian lights outside St Matthew’s Church, I hear the click of feet on the pavement behind me, someone hurrying up from behind. The sound makes me pick up my own pace, pushing on against the wind. It feels as if I’m racing them. Or hurrying to get away. Not far to the office now, but the streets are busier at the bottom of the hill, the narrow pavements of the High Street crowding people all around me. Yet still, over all the noise, I can hear those clacking footsteps. I can hardly tell whether I’m really hearing them, or whether they are a figment of my own mind.