I’m checking Facebook for updates from my family. I don’t do it too often – it’s a kind of masochism, I guess – but I can’t resist it today. It’s been so long since I have seen any of them: since I have been permitted to see any of them.

As I wait, I turn up the heaters, put my feet clad in tights on them – Jason won’t mind – and browse.

To Joe, first. He never puts much on there, and especially not lately, but there are a few nuggets here and there for me to find. He signed a petition about Guide Dogs a while ago, which has remained on his profile since the last time I checked. Still the same profile photo, taken a few weeks before the holiday. The same sunglasses he wore the day after the cover-up. I bet he’s thrown them out now. He has taken Vets 24 off his current occupation, he’s just listed as a vet, location unknown.

Paul has stopped asking for him. He used to, all the time, in that nonsensical way children do. The same way he asks often if it is his birthday. Paul is an information-hoarder. One day, after everything happened, he said, note perfect, ‘Joe won’t want to see us for a long time,’ an exact imitation of me.

Jason greets me, notepad in hand, half a Mars Bar in the other. ‘Good week?’ he says, as he always does. He doesn’t have on any shoes today. I glance down, distracted by his pink socks. ‘Sorry,’ he says with a short laugh. ‘Shoes got wet in this pissing weather. Hope you don’t mind.’

He sits down and crosses his legs in that way that he does, and looks at me, one pink foot bobbing up and down. ‘Why don’t we begin to talk about it, instead of around it?’ he says, his eyes directly on me.

‘Verona?’ I say.

‘Of course.’ He holds my gaze for two seconds, three, four, then gives a deliberate, disarming shrug.

‘Okay.’ I breathe deeply. I knew this would happen. Some of our meetings have been led by me, about emotions, things I wanted to talk about. But now I guess it is time to grasp the stinging nettle.

Jason clicks the top of his pen, poised, finally, to jot anything down. Of course. The notepad. He intended that we discuss it formally today.

I don’t speak for several minutes, and he lets the silence stretch on. A road gritter moves along in the rain on the street below.

I close my eyes. It’s got to happen. It is happening. And I have to be ready to talk about it. Properly. Jason, the lawyer, must take my statement. He has been so patient, until now – once told me he has given me so much more time than other clients because he felt sorry for me, but here we are.

‘It was eighteen months ago,’ I start falteringly. Eighteen months since my family changed, and over a year since I last saw them. ‘It began on holiday.’