I feel compelled to try harder to find him – call up his work, go around to the flat – but then I’m hit by the thought: what if he doesn’t want to be found? What if he’d realized, after finally escaping his wife’s abuse, that he was more miserable without her?

He’d certainly displayed classic symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome in our early sessions; showing empathy when she mistreated him, and defending her when I dared to suggest that their relationship was one of captor and captive.

Perhaps what we’d both initially perceived as a threat was actually her tracking him down to promise that things would be different from now on; that she’d get help and change, if only he came back to her. So maybe he did just that, because he believed she was telling the truth. And who am I to tell him he can’t? Maybe Leon’s right. I can’t save everyone, especially those who don’t want to be saved.

But if I knew deep down that Jacob didn’t want to be rescued, why is that niggle at the back of my mind turning into an itch under my skin that I just can’t scratch?

Am I honestly prepared to be the one person who knows the danger he’s in – the one person he reached out to – and not do anything about it?

I’m in my car before I have a chance to question myself any further. I have to do what my conscience tells me, otherwise I’ll never be able to sleep soundly again.

I call Jacob’s mobile as I drive along the harbour road, the ringing on the car speaker drowning out the cacophony of seagulls and halyards as they clank against the masts of the fishing boats moored up for the night.

‘Pick up, pick up,’ I plead out loud.

It rings a couple of times, and I dare to hope that he’ll answer and tell me that he’s sorry but he’s had a hell of a day at work and our appointment totally slipped his mind. That’s how simple the explanation could be. That’s how simple I desperately want it to be, but it goes to voicemail, again.

I pull up on the tree-lined avenue, just opposite the Victorian house where Leon and I own the flat. The flat I’m renting to Jacob without Leon’s knowledge.

The front bay window, where the living room is, has curtains drawn, and my mind instantly conjures up the image of a rotting corpse being hidden from view behind them.

‘For God’s sake, get a grip Ni,’ I remonstrate with myself out loud, remembering that we, too, used to close the curtains at this time of day, as the sun was so bright that we weren’t able to see the TV.