She had the good grace to blush. I said nothing, but a snatch of ‘Common People’ by Pulp burst into my mind; the bit about everyone hating tourists. My brain tends to do this, throw out lyrics at inappropriate times, and I mentally swiped the reference away. Anya wasn’t like the spoiled princess in the song. At least, she wasn’t now.

She continued in a rush, ‘I know you think my childhood was one long run through a sunlit meadow, Ell, but there was always so much pressure to be … good. To be Mum and Dad’s golden girl.’ She grimaced and looked up at the ceiling. ‘I suppose Liam,’ she swallowed, ‘represented something wildly different. I don’t know.’

My impatience and hunger for more information, even if it was going to wound me, felt like a physical pressure in my guts now. But I’d sit here all night if needs be. She had to do it in her own time and I had to hear everything.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘after a while I suppose the novelty began to wear off a little. He was possessive, like I told you. I realized I was getting in too deep with him and began to get worried about how I was going to get out from under the relationship.’ She stopped again and stared down at her hands, resting on her thighs. She scrunched her hands into fists.

‘Things came to a head one evening when I finally went over to his house in … whatever that place was called.’

‘Waterbeach.’ She couldn’t really have forgotten. The cutting was right there. I felt myself drawing back against the chair.

‘Waterbeach, yeah,’ she said and looked down at her hands. ‘Anyway, he had some acid … I ended up taking it, even though I knew it was a bad idea. He took it too, which he didn’t always do, for obvious reasons.’

A deep sigh. A hard rub along her jaw line, eyes distant now.

‘We started arguing,’ she said. ‘I told him I wanted to end things and he got really aggressive about it. I ran out of the house and went to the station, before realizing there was ages before the train back to Cambridge. He followed me there.’

Her hands were now fluttery pale birds in her lap.

‘We started rowing again,’ she said, voice jerky. ‘Really viciously. Both of us were off our heads. We’d thought we were alone but this … woman suddenly appeared and asked me if I was okay. A middle-aged, black woman.’

‘Alice Adebayo …’ I murmured. Anya winced and closed her eyes momentarily before nodding.