But the very first day I went back, he was there waiting for me, and despite not wanting to admit it, knowing it weakened every barrier I’d put up around myself, I’d really missed him.

I didn’t let him off the hook easily though; he had to work hard to convince me that whatever he had with the other woman was definitely over. But once I was sure I could trust him, we were inseparable – living in each other’s pockets, until he’d stopped me in the street outside my apartment, and with the snow falling down around us, had taken hold of my hands and put them on his chest.

‘I have something to tell you,’ he’d said.

I’d looked at him, unable to believe that I could ever love someone so much, when he said, ‘I have to go back to England.’

I’d pulled my hands away as if they’d been scalded with a hot poker.

‘They won’t renew my visa,’ he said, his eyes burrowing into mine.

‘But I thought your company was sorting that,’ I’d managed, as conflicting thoughts and snippets of conversations buffeted around my head.

‘They tried, but . . .’

I remember being blinded by the sudden realization that of course it was never going to last. Nothing ever did if I was stupid enough to love it.

‘Go then,’ I said, pushing him away in an immature fit of pique. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘I want you to come with me,’ he’d said, as I reached my front door.

‘I can’t,’ was my instinctive reaction.

Yet I was thinking, Why not? even before he said it himself.

I had nothing to keep me in New York; I was waiting tables whilst trying to get my psychology degree, I had no family aside from Aunt Meryl, and I spent my days avoiding the sights and smells that took me back to a time before my life changed forever.

What did I have to lose by going to England?

Everything, it seems.

‘We’ll be needing to speak to your husband at some point,’ says Robson now when we reach the box room, where Leon’s monitor sits on the desk.

‘About his computer?’ I say, my mouth dry.

‘About your whereabouts on the nights of the twenty-first and twenty-third of June,’ she says dourly.

‘I told you where I was on the twenty-third,’ I say.

‘No, Mrs Chandler, we told you where you were that evening. Remember?’

I clench my fists at my side in frustration.

‘What is it your husband does?’ she asks.

‘He works here on the estate,’ I say. I don’t want to give them anything more than they need.

‘So he works from home?’ she says, taking in the architects’ plans for the old stables that are pinned up on the walls.

‘In a sense,’ I say.