It wasn’t how she’d imagined telling her story. She’d hoped to take the stand, put her hand on the Bible and swear to tell the whole truth, clock a girl with Debbie’s high cheekbones, about ten years younger than her in the courtroom, lean and golden and worried. Sammi had wanted to look right at Chief Inspector Michael Carrington, make him see her, and then move her eyes slowly and carefully over the crowd, so that he knew she was telling it all straight to the golden girl, the acknowledged and admitted daughter.

Instead, she sat at a table, with four other people in the room. The walls were very close; as though they’d been built around the table. Her lawyer, Alex, poured her water from a jug, a stack of glasses awaiting the next four people to file in. It felt like a job interview. The others were all in suits, in grey. One of them told her in official, formal language that the proceedings would be recorded. There were wrapped biscuits, on a plate.

She’d known it would be like this – Alex had told her – but she’d still dressed carefully, as though for court. As though she was going to see him again. She’d put on lipstick, she’d contoured her cheek fat, pulled out an expensive scarf she’d got from work colleagues for her thirtieth and never worn. She’d positioned it with her granny’s brooch. She wanted to look like a professional woman. Someone who mattered. Someone who you couldn’t sneer at or deny.

She had known he wouldn’t be there. But some bit of her thought he would want to come. Knowing it was happening. Knowing she would be testifying that day. Wouldn’t he at least want to reason with her, give her some – any – sort of explanation?

No, it seemed, he didn’t. But he would hear this testimony, wouldn’t he? Mark or Michael, he would need to know every single thing that was being said. That sort of vanity, that wasn’t the kind of thing you could fake, shrug on and off for the sake of playing a character. So she spoke to the recorder, to them all, through them all to him, imagining that worried, radiant blonde daughter, sunlight from the window pooling in a halo round her head.