She looks at her watch. ‘What’s it about? Why me in particular? I’d still like to know how you knew who I was.’

‘It’s . . . my boyfriend,’ I say in a monotone. It won’t be any easier to get the words out once we’re inside. If I tell her why I’m here, she’ll stop asking how I knew her name. ‘He thinks he killed somebody, but he’s wrong.’

Charlotte Zailer looks me up and down. ‘Wrong?’ She sighs. ‘Okay, now you’ve got my attention. Look, come inside and we’ll have a chat.’

As we walk, I move my foot around inside my shoe, trying to dislodge whatever’s digging into the pad of soft skin beneath my toes. It won’t budge. I can feel a sticky wetness: blood. Ignore it, block it out. I follow Sergeant Zailer into the reception area where there are more people—some in uniform, others in blue Aertex tops with the words ‘Police Staff’ printed on them. There’s a lot of blue here: the herringbone carpet on the floor, two suede-effect sofas forming a right angle in one corner. A long counter of pale, varnished pine with a semi-circular end protrudes from one wall like a breakfast bar jutting out into the middle of a kitchen.

Sergeant Zailer stops to speak to a middle-aged man with a pot belly, a dimpled chin and fluffy grey hair. He calls her Charlie, not Charlotte. I press down on my coat pocket with my right hand and listen to the faint rustle of the newspaper, trying to remind myself of the connection between us—between me and Charlie—but I have never felt lonelier in my life, and only the pain charging up from my foot through all the nerves in my body stops me from running away.

After what I’ve told her, she would run after me. How could she not? She’d chase me and she’d catch me.

‘Come on,’ she says to me when she’s finished talking to the grey-haired man. I limp after her. It’s a relief once we’re alone, in a corridor with uncovered brick walls that looks much older than the reception area. There is a background noise of running water; I look around, but its source isn’t obvious. Along the walls on both sides, against the brick, are pictures at eye level. On my right is a series of framed posters—domestic violence, needle exchanges, building safer communities. Opposite these are framed black and white etchings of different streets in Spilling. They’re atmospheric in a jagged sort of way, conveying the narrow, claustrophobic feel of the interlocking roads in the oldest part of town, the uneven house- and shop-fronts, the streets with their slippery cobbles. I feel a pang of sympathy for the artist, knowing that his or her exhibition is displayed here purely for its local relevance; no one values these pictures in their own right, as works of art.

‘Are you all right?’ Charlie Zailer asks me, waiting for me to catch up. ‘You’re limping.’