I hurried towards my study. The door was still open – I invariably kept it closed. As I went through and by habit pulled it behind me I heard the door banging against the frame. As soon as I was through the doorway my foot caught against a raised floorboard, standing proud from the rest of the floor by a couple of centimetres. I tripped and sprawled forward. I managed to catch hold of myself on the edge of my desk, so I did not crash to the floor. But who had moved my desk? It was normally never as close to the patio door as this. My desktop computer was where it should be, but the power lead was stretched tight from the socket on the wall to the back of the case. It usually lay untidily across my floor – I stepped over it a dozen times a day. It was a hazard now, stretched so tightly, so I tugged the cable out of the wall socket and laid it on the floor.

I hurried through the rest of the house. Who had opened the corridor windows? There was a mirror in the hallway, cracked from side to side: a jagged line across the pane, but the glass itself had not fallen out of the frame.

I rushed outside. Frejah’s black sportster had squeezed past my own car and was now stationary on the gravel hardstanding. The engine was not running, but the gull wing door on the driver’s side was fully raised. Frejah was inside, straining to clamber out. I went to stand beside her.

I said: ‘Would you like me to help you out of the car?’

‘This time, yes.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘You will find out. I’ve come for Jeksid. He’s carrying a huge grudge against you, as well as against me. You mustn’t listen to him.’

I gave her both my hands, and she used them to pull herself upright from the moulded car seat. I noticed that her damaged hand was still bandaged – she positioned it so that I gripped her wrist as I helped her up.

Once she was up she straightened her back and legs, but the imperious posture I had noticed when I first met her was gone. She hunched her shoulders, she held her head at a slight angle. She flashed a serious look at me, then went back towards the car. She leaned forward, reached inside. When she turned towards me again she was brandishing the gun I had seen stored in the car’s trunk.

She was not pointing it at me, but the sight of it was frightening. I moved back from her.

‘Put that away, Frejah,’ I said. ‘You don’t need that.’

‘I need it,’ she said. ‘Jeksid is here, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘He killed my husband, and he carries a gun everywhere. I’m not going near him without this.’