‘And then I met you and you told me about the table laid out in her flat and I realized …’ Freya drops her head into her hands. ‘She never stopped, did she? I don’t think she ever stopped playing my game.’

Through my dizziness and vertigo, I see it. The pieces slide into a heart-rending picture. ‘Those plates,’ I blurt out. ‘The meal she was preparing, the table set for two guests. It was all in her mind, wasn’t it? Nobody was ever going to come.’

Freya can only nod. ‘After you found her, the police tried to reach me, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t speak to them. Because I understood at once why no one found her and I knew, in the end, it was all my fault. She cut herself off from everything, everyone, lost herself in her fantasy world. And it was all because of what I had taught her. Our Make-Believe game had gone far too far. So I hung up every call from the police. I refused to answer even when they came here, to my door. Like you have now. I wouldn’t let them in, but you … you weren’t going to stop. You wanted to know, and I didn’t want you to expose me.’

It’s obvious and I’m sure of it now. I have a pain in my chest, as though all the muscles around my heart are cramping. ‘You wrote that text message. You pushed all those pages through my door. You already had my address, my contact details from the CMHT, and you dug out that old entry from my psychiatric file. You used what you thought happened with Charlie against me – to threaten me, to scare me. You tried to make me feel so crazy I would stop.’

‘I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I was scared. There’s a report about me, a terrible report about what happened between me and Sarah as children. If it had got out, if any of those details had got into the newspaper …’ Freya puts her face in her hands. ‘It would have ruined all my ambitions and jeopardized my whole career.’ She looks up again. ‘And honestly, I was only trying to help you, Jennifer. I mean, look at what all this searching has done to you. I was only trying to steer you away. For your own good. For your own health.’

I put my own head down. I grip my knees and force myself to take a breath, drawing the air right to the very bottom of my lungs.

I think of Sarah and the truth she couldn’t face. The world of dreams she made for herself.