In my small defence, I have thought about her a lot. The jumper, Philippa. She’s been named. She was called Philippa Helens and she was twenty-nine years old and from High Barnet. There was a photo of her online this morning: long blonde hair, brown eyes, really pretty. She looked happy in the photo. She looked like a proper, well-put-together person who’d got this. Not someone who felt the opposite. I wish I hadn’t seen her picture, really, but in a strange way it does make me feel slightly more qualified to talk about her. I’ve had that photo on my mind since five o’clock this morning.

Verity’s eyes are fixed on my face. I can feel my birthmark beginning to itch, to pulsate. ‘And how did you feel about that?’

I’ve implied I saw everything: a figure leaping on to the tracks, a body struck, a horrific after-scene. When do I tell her I only saw three hundred heads and a balloon?

‘Well … I was disturbed.’

‘Disturbed?’

‘Wouldn’t anyone be?’

‘Well, you tell me, Prue. If you can. Tell me how you feel.’

What’s another word for ‘disturbed’?

‘Are you angry with her in any way?’

‘Angry? Why would I feel angry with her?’

‘For disrupting your journey, for making you an involuntary witness, for causing you and many other people to feel sad and shaken and, well’ – she smiles at me sympathetically – ‘bad.’

Well, yes, I do feel bad, I think. I feel bad for the many other people who really were witnesses and may need help but haven’t asked for it, while I sit here on this smelly sofa under false pretences. But I am not angry.

‘I feel sorry for her,’ I say.

Poor Philippa. Her face swims before me again: smiling, happy, those deep brown eyes that were supposed to see the world for many years to come. A photo that will now be consigned to a box of others by her grieving family – that was our Philippa. Or placed lovingly in an album, sealed for ever behind a polythene sleeve. Damn, I haven’t done the photo for Angela yet, I realize. I’ll do it tonight, if I remember. I’m not in any rush. And I’ll crop me out of it.

‘I feel sorry for the woman who jumped,’ I repeat. Now this is the truth … ‘Philippa. I’ve been thinking about her and I feel sorry for her.’

Verity nods. She makes some notes on a little notepad on her lap. Is she writing ‘lunatic’ … ‘terrible birthmark’ …? I don’t know when she’ll ever refer to these notes. I mean, I won’t be coming back.

‘Any flashbacks, nightmares?’

Not about that. ‘No.’