It’s no distance at all from here to King’s College Hospital in Camberwell. Too far to walk but, once the taxi comes, we’ll be there in ten minutes or less. We can go there, I can get the help I need. Charlie can get the help he needs. But even as I type the details into the app, I’m overcome by a wave of nausea. The thought of that blank A&E waiting room, the sense of illness and injury all around. The wait, the endless wait, and I am so fearful of wasting people’s time because what if it is only all in my head? I can’t do it. I cannot go there, even though the woman on the phone said I should. I’m too confused, I can’t seem to explain myself to a stranger. I need someone who knows, who understands, with whom I don’t have to start from the beginning.

There is only one person I can think of. Someone who has been right all along. I know now that I never should have got involved in Sarah’s death. I should have left everything to the police and the coroner, not gone poking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Wasn’t needed. There are secrets in all this that someone doesn’t want me to discover. And all I’ve managed to do in searching is unravel my own mind. And she was right, she tried her best to warn me, for my own good, for my own sake, and I wouldn’t listen, but I need her now. My mind is splintering, I can feel it. I’ve completely lost my way, and I have Charlie here in my arms, but I need help to protect him.

He is exhausted, lolling against me. I carry him through to the living room and set him down on the sofa. In the depths of my coat pocket, I find it. It’s still here. I pull it out; the tiny pink rectangle of plastic stares up at me. Her photo, her date of birth. Her address. I carry it in shaky hands back into the kitchen, set it face up on the worktop. I type the details into the Uber app: our destination. The driver will be here in less than five minutes and I hurry to my bedroom to get dressed. I pull on crumpled jeans, an unwashed jumper. The armpits smell of sweat. My hair is greasy. I am a mess. But Freya will set me straight, I have to believe that. If only I had listened to her from the start.

YOU’RE CRAZY. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.