While Ruth reached up to put a tape in the machine, Charlie surveyed the hall. Apart from the door to the lounge, there were three others: kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, presumably. Only one was ajar, and through it Charlie caught a glimpse of shiny maroon fabric and a pink cushion. That had to be the bedroom. Checking first that Ruth was still busy with the machine and the remote control, Charlie pushed the door gently to open it further.

Yes, this was Ruth’s bedroom, Ruth and Aidan’s, though the only evidence of a man’s presence was a bulky watch with a leather strap lying on the floor. The rest was over-the-top feminine: ornate perfume bottles lined up on the window-sill, a pink voile scarf draped across the bed, silk curtains, also pink, white lacy underwear strewn everywhere, a pink heart-shaped hot-water bottle. Even the paperbacks with creased spines in lopsided piles looked girly, with titles like Hungry Women and Public Smiles, Private Tears.

Ruth was busy rewinding a tape. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The remote’s bust. I have to keep my finger pressed down on it to make it work. It takes ages.’

‘No problem,’ said Charlie. She leaned into the bedroom to get a look at what was behind the door, and nearly cried out in shock, lurching back out into the hall. She’d seen it only for a split second, but it was enough. What the fuck . . .? Her mind reeled. It was absurd, the sort of thing you might have an anxiety dream about—too extreme and too ludicrous to happen in real life. But this was real; Charlie knew what she’d seen.

Nearly a whole wall in Ruth’s bedroom was covered with newspaper cuttings about her, Charlie.

She pulled the door to, her heart juddering, the full range of headlines pulsing in her brain, phrases that had haunted her for two years, that she struggled every day not to think about: colourfully worded assaults on her character, selected by hacks for their shock value or alliterative appeal.

Headlines that Ruth had collected and stuck up on the wall beside her bed. Why? More recent articles too, Charlie could swear—though she had no intention of looking again to check—about her return to work, the forum she’d set up to tackle business crime in the area. No, she hadn’t imagined it. As well as the many photographs of her crying at the press conference in 2006, there had been one or two of her in uniform, after her transfer out of CID, wearing her polished I’m-so-proud-of-what-I’ve-done-for-the-community smile. She felt sick.

‘Here we go,’ said Ruth.