It’s taking all my effort to keep my expression nonplussed, even though I know the exact garment she’s talking about.

‘Does that sound familiar to you at all?’ she asks, looking at me.

I shake my head, believing I’m safer on mute, but I’m screaming on the inside, the cacophony threatening to drown out all reason and show me for who I really am.

‘Well, we’ll soon see,’ she says smugly.

‘Ma’am, you might want to take a look at this,’ an officer calls out.

My heart stops as Robson raises her eyebrows, as if offering me the chance to tell her what they might have found before she gets there.

I pull my mouth into a tight line, giving nothing away, but the words reverberate around and around in my head. Tell the truth. Continue lying. Tell the truth. Continue lying. The roar of the conundrum of how best to get myself out of this is deafening. The constant questions, should have dones, meant to haves, circle furiously, getting louder with every revolution.

I watch numbly as an officer hands her what looks like a mobile phone in a bag marked ‘Evidence’.

‘Is this yours?’ she asks, showing me a black Nokia through the clear plastic. Its big buttons glare back at me and I force myself to think where it might have come from. If it was found in the ‘man drawer’ in the kitchen, where everything from dead batteries, takeaway menus from restaurants that have closed down and keys that we no longer own the locks to lives, then it could be a model harking back to our pre-iPhone days. But I can’t help but notice that it looks relatively modern and new.

‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘Where was it found?’

Robson looks at her officer.

‘In the bathroom cupboard under the sink, ma’am,’ he says, as if I’m not here. ‘Concealed on a hidden shelf.’

‘Concealed?’ I blurt out, half laughing. ‘Are you kidding me?’

As ever, Robson’s expression is taut with seriousness, looking at me as if I have no idea of the shit I’m in. A concealed phone? Oh, I know the shit I’m in. I’m knee-deep in an intricately woven web of lies and deceit. Somebody is very definitely out to get me, and I need to find out who, before I’m spun up so tightly that I’ll never be able to get out.

‘I’ve never seen it before,’ I say.

‘So you have no idea how it came to be in your bathroom cabinet?’

I shake my head. ‘Though I thought someone was in the house last night,’ I offer.