‘Sorry, I should have offered you water,’ she said.

‘I’m fine,’ said Nick, just as I responded, ‘That would be great.’

A faint smile played around her lips, as if our opposing replies confirmed all her suspicions. She was starting to enrage me, and we were only five minutes in.

Water was fetched, and after another artificial silence, she finally deigned to start.

‘Mr and Mrs Appleby, I’ve asked you to come in on the back of a complaint made by your daughter, Rachel. She—’

‘No,’ I said, cutting across her, my heart pounding. ‘That’s incorrect. We’ve made a complaint about Amber Greville, her therapist. Or so-called therapist.’

‘Yes, I heard that from Shepherd’s Bush. But Rachel’s complaint was formally registered first, by me. It’s against you. And I take it very seriously.’

I could feel the blood draining from my face. I grabbed for Nick’s hand, which was stiff with barely contained anger.

‘Our daughter’s a mess,’ he said. ‘You can’t trust a word she says. That woman’s treating her like a puppet. She’s got no mind of her own right now.’

Williams’s gaze was cool. ‘That really doesn’t match up with my impression of your daughter, Mr Appleby. She was composed, articulate. The only point where she was obviously distressed, or lost her train of thought, was when she talked about the harassment she alleges she’s suffered from her family.’

For a second it was as though I was watching the scene from above. It felt like a dream, or that supposed moment between life and death when you float untethered from the material world and your whole miserable existence flashes before your eyes.

‘But it’s all lies!’ I wailed. Nick’s palm pressed down on my hand, but I was too far gone, the stress of the past few months erupting out of me. ‘She’s got her involved in a sex cult. She’s pushed her into thousands of pounds worth of debt. She’s told her I’m some kind of medieval torturer…’

Williams’s face was impassive, cold. Nick squeezed my hand, hard.

‘Lily!’ he said, sharp.

‘Do not speak to me like I’m a dog you accidentally let off the lead,’ I said, more venom in my voice than I intended. We needed to wrest back control, and Nick knew it.

‘Our daughter is a very ill girl,’ he said. ‘Addicts are manipulative, and she’s doing exactly that to you, if you don’t mind me saying. And we’ve lived with it for thirty-one years.’

‘She’s not a girl, she’s a woman,’ said the tiresomely politically correct detective. ‘And as I’ve stated, my impression was that she was a woman entirely in control of her mental faculties. That’s why I’ve referred this case to the CPS.’