I thought Mike looked a bit disgruntled that he wasn’t being offered a lift all the way home, but he didn’t comment. That didn’t surprise me. Mike didn’t usually pick fights with men; he found them harder to intimidate.

When we got to the car park, the three of us walked to my car. Thankfully, a couple of the park staff had been doing their best to keep a clear route out of the gates. I paused, waiting for Mike to follow Singh, but he stopped as well.

‘You can travel back to town with some of the PCs,’ Singh told him, and I flashed a brief smile at him to thank him for picking up on the negative energy between me and Mike.

‘It’s okay, Paige can give me a lift, can’t you? It’ll give us a chance to catch up. You’ll need to drive through Scunthorpe to get home.’ He gave me one of his most charming smiles, which I refused to return.

There was a brief pause and I watched my breath fog in the air in front of me. Making eye contact with Singh, I willed him to insist that Mike went with him.

After a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, Singh said, ‘All the same, I think it would be better if you travelled with one of our vehicles. In this weather, I don’t want to ask Paige to divert.’

For a moment I thought Mike was going to refuse, and then we would reach a stalemate because there was no way I would let him get in my car with me, but in the end he gave a nonchalant shrug and followed Singh to a police car.

‘Hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk soon, Paige,’ he said over his shoulder as the two of them walked away from me.

Getting in my car, I leant my head on the steering wheel and took a few deep breaths. Now was not the moment to lose it. After all this time, I couldn’t let him worm his way back into my head. Part of me wondered what he was so keen to say, but I knew it was probably only an excuse to get me in an enclosed environment with him.

Before I set off home I turned on the ignition to warm up the car, then I pulled out my phone to call my sister. I propped the phone up on the holder on my dashboard as it rang.