‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.’

‘Are you asthmatic? Have you got an inhaler?’

Asthmatic? I don’t know what she’s talking about. ‘I’m all right,’ I tell her.

‘Well, come on, then.’ When I don’t move, she doubles back on herself, takes my arm and, with one hand on my back, steers me down the corridor, saying something about tea and coffee that sounds more complicated than a simple either-or offer. I mumble, ‘Thanks,’ hoping it’s the right answer. She unlocks the green door, directs me to a chair, tells me to wait. I don’t want her to leave me alone but I’m unwilling to ask her not to, knowing how pathetic I’d sound.

The room contains two chairs apart from the one I’m sitting on, a waste-paper basket and a table with a white-flowered cyclamen on it. The plant is too big for its pot. It must have been for some time, yet someone has been watering it regularly, or else its foliage wouldn’t look so lush. What fool would water a plant day after day and not realise it needed re-potting?

Green. The door of our room at the Drummond Hotel in London was green. One night of my life, one night out of thirty-eight years, but part of me is still there, trapped in the night that Aidan told me. Part of me never left that hotel.

All my books say there’s no point wasting your energy on ‘if only’s. They offer no advice about what to do if you’re hooked on them. There are no patches available in chemists’ shops that an ‘if only’ addict can stick on her arm to help break the destructive habit.

If only Aidan and I hadn’t gone to London last December, the nightmare I’m living now would never have started.

‘My boyfriend told me he killed a woman, but he didn’t.’

‘I need the woman’s name, and details of where we can find her,’ says Sergeant Zailer, ready to write down whatever I say. When I don’t answer immediately, she says, ‘Ruth, if Aidan’s beaten somebody up so badly that—’

‘No! He hasn’t touched her.’ I have to make her understand. ‘She’s fine. Nobody’s hurt. I . . . He hasn’t been anywhere near her, I’m sure he hasn’t.’

‘Nobody’s hurt?’ Charlie Zailer looks stumped.

‘No.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘Yes.’

She thinks for a few moments, then smiles at me. ‘All right. Let’s come back to your boyfriend and this woman later,’ she says. ‘I’m going to take a few basic details first, if that’s okay.’ Suddenly, she has an entirely different manner; she is no longer impatient, suspicious. She’s ditched her too-loud patronising voice and is acting as if we’re friends; we might be at a pub quiz, on the same team—she’s writing down the answers. ‘Name? Ruth Bussey, right? B-U-S-S-E-Y?’

‘Yes.’

‘Middle name?’

Does she really want to know? Is she joking? ‘Zinta.’

She laughs. ‘Really?’

‘My mother’s Latvian.’

‘It’s a great name,’ she says. ‘I’ve always wanted a more interesting middle name. Mine’s Elizabeth. And your address?’