‘So why has he left me to live in your flat? Why were you in a hotel with him on the night he went missing?’

‘Look,’ I say, my panic rising. ‘He was a client, nothing more. I was only ever trying to help him.’

‘He didn’t need your kind of help. He may have had a few anger problems, but we were working through them. It was as much my fault as it was his. I understood why he lashed out; he was frustrated, but he never meant anything by it.’

I’m trying to make sense of what she’s saying, but it’s like a square peg being driven into a round hole, battering my brain with an idea so inconceivable that it refuses to accept it.

I remember the cigarette burns he kept hidden with shirt sleeves, the bruises on his shins concealed by trousers.

I’d always believed him.

Do I still? I cannot even begin to comprehend why he would have made it all up. Or worse still, shared his horror stories as a victim, when in fact he was the perpetrator. But had I got it all wrong? Had he spun me a yarn? Was the man I knew as Jacob really that good an actor?

‘None of this is making sense,’ I say. ‘Are you at home? I’m coming to see you; we need to talk.’

‘If you come anywhere near here, I’ll call the police,’ she says, sounding genuinely scared.

‘I’m not who you think I am.’

‘You’re exactly who I think you are,’ she says. ‘The blood in my husband’s flat is proof of that.’

‘Blood?’ I repeat.

My mouth dries up as I remember the spotlessly clean flat with no sign of any disturbance, least of all blood.

‘It was all over the kitchen floor,’ she says, making my stomach lurch. ‘And they’ve found your footprint in it.’

The line goes dead, but I’m outside the address where I know the only other Michael Talbot lives within a few minutes. I look through teary eyes at the perfect family home, its neat box hedging and white window shutters giving away none of the secrets it holds within.

The thought of what I’m about to walk into almost makes me run back to the car. If I wasn’t trembling so much, not trusting my legs to get me there, maybe I would. But it wouldn’t make my problems go away, it would only make them worse. I’d be relinquishing all control and I’d just be left waiting, wondering when the guillotine was going to fall.

I have to do this. I have to take back my life.