Each visit he looked greyer and more shrunken. More unshaven too, because why would he bother to smarten himself up, just for me? He had no desire to please me or entertain me any more. That Calvin had gone, that man who’d joked about chutney and kissed my elbows. My easy-going, chatty friend had been replaced by a stranger. A prisoner. A murderer. The disconnect was so dizzying that I couldn’t link them up. Instead, I just listened to his story, delivered in a monotone with sometimes a cocky tilt of the head as he looked at me, challenging me, like those seagulls in Deal. Sort of pitying me, too. Why would he do that? Because I believed him? He was right. Why did I believe him, after he’d spun me so many lies?

Why, for instance, did he tell me his wife had died from an aneurism and then changed it to suicide? What was the point of that? Was he just a congenital liar? A sociopath? A psychopath? If any of this had taught me anything, it was that you never know anybody.

So there I was, driving into the hinterland of south-east London, week after week. Heaven knows how I found the place; each time I got lost and came to a halt under some godforsaken flyover. I was propelled by a need for some sort of explanation.

Which came out eventually as I sat in the visitors’ hall, facing the man upon whom I’d once pinned my hopes. He didn’t try to justify himself or make excuses. In fact he seemed strangely detached from his own actions. Not a flicker of interest in my reaction, either, which was chilling. But then I thought: he’d never been that curious about me, or indeed found out anything about me at all.

A sociopath. Psychopath. Whatever. Why hadn’t I realised?

And more to the point: had he been planning on murdering me? Once or twice this flashed through my mind but I dismissed it. I wasn’t rich enough. We’d have to be married for him to get his hands on my house, and marriage had not been mentioned by either of us. He’d only suggested living together. Of course, he could have been playing a long game, as he did with Angie, but I’d never been as attractive as her and, quite honestly, I felt too upset to speculate about the future. I had enough horror to deal with, in re-examining the past.