‘Evil bitch. She never even said she wanted to be in the band! She was always away. And anyway, I was just a kid…’ I stopped abruptly. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much this was panicking me. And puzzling me, too. Surely a now-respectable university professor had better things to do?

At the back of my mind, I’d always had a fearful thought that she might have had something to do with the paint incident – paid someone to do it, perhaps. Or, knowing Samantha, egged them on.

I was terrified at the thought that Iain or anyone else might know about my past – my relationship with Samantha, and my shameful abandonment of Mum when she’d needed me most.

The weird threatening letters in green ink addressed to me care of the fan club had been scary enough, and even without the paint incident we – I – had endured more stalkerish behaviour than our peers seemed to get.

The letter from Samantha was very different.

In a way, though, I wasn’t surprised we’d heard from her. Her silence all these years was what had been more surprising – she’d always been a terrible star-fucker, basking in the reflected glory of anybody even remotely famous.

‘So is Big World going to pay her off?’ I realised I was holding my breath.

‘Well that depends. On you,’ said Iain, and my heart sank. Surely he couldn’t mean what I feared he did? ‘We could come to a little private arrangement, you and I,’ he went on, and I thought, shit, he does.

I looked at my bare toes and had to swallow hard not to vomit over them.

‘So you are actually blackmailing me into having sex with you. That’s classy.’

‘Oh, Merry! Don’t look at it like that. Let’s just call it a situation where you can scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.’

‘I’ll consider it. Don’t even think of coming over tonight though,’ I said, and hung up, shaking, before he could say anything else.

After that I pottered about, trying to calm down, cleaning up the kitchen, making a cup of tea to drink in bed. I retired upstairs, taking deep breaths in an attempt to quell the tension and fury in my solar plexus. I took a sleeping pill and eventually managed to fall asleep, mindlessly watching some terrible film with the bedroom television on a timer, as I often did when we weren’t touring, gigging or promoting anything.