I’d been tempted to offer him our flat, which was standing empty just a few miles down the coast, there and then. We were planning on decorating it, ready for the onslaught of tourists that descend on Whitstable for the holiday season, but somehow summer is already upon us and we haven’t got around to it yet. It’s in a great little spot, just two roads back from the beach, and has served us well these past six years whilst Leon and I have been commuting into nearby Canterbury: him to his job as events manager at the cathedral and me to my grey little windowless box in the council offices.

But when the opportunity to live in a grace and favour cottage at Tattenhall had presented itself, it had been a no-brainer. Not least because it gave me the chance to set up my own practice in the outbuilding, which, seeing as I was embroiled in a stand-off with my line manager, couldn’t have come at a better time.

‘You’ve crossed the line,’ he’d said, when he discovered I’d helped a woman seek sanctuary from her violent husband in the middle of the night.

‘She was in imminent danger,’ I’d retorted. ‘Are we really such slaves to bureaucracy that we’re prepared to risk a woman being killed?’

‘Red tape’s there for a reason,’ he’d barked as I walked away.

Well, if it was there, I chose not to see it when I slipped out of the house and drove the four miles to where Sarah lived. That’s not to say fear wasn’t coursing through my veins as I sat there with my lights and engine off, surrounded by what felt like an invisible trip wire that would set off a deafening alarm as soon as she crossed it. But my stomach was in knots for her, not myself.

I watched with my heart in my mouth as she came out and carefully closed the door behind her. Just one forced error, and her husband would be down those stairs and dragging her back up to give her the beating of her life.

‘You can do this,’ I’d said out loud, as she momentarily hesitated in the porch. ‘Come on, Sarah, just a few more steps.’

She silently ran towards the car without looking back, but just as she reached the passenger door, an upstairs light went on.

‘Get in, get in,’ I whispered, my voice hoarse with terror.

I’d managed to get her to the safehouse, but two days later her husband had paid me a visit in the underground car park at work, demanding to know where she was.

I wasn’t going to tell Leon, but I was still trembling when I got home, unable to shake the memory of a double-barrelled shotgun being pressed against my temple.