“No, no.” I cross the room and drop onto the desk chair as my legs give way beneath me. “Fuck, Al. I can’t believe it’s you.”

“I know.” She laughs dryly. “It’s been a long time, Emma.”

“What … how … did you get my Facebook message?”

“Yeah, literally five minutes ago. I haven’t used my Facebook account in years, and then … what the fuck’s going on, Emma? Someone from CID called me this morning, that’s why I checked it. They said you’d been involved in an accident and they wanted to know where I was in the early hours of Tuesday morning last week. They asked if we’d been in touch. I said I hadn’t spoken to you for years.”

“Someone ran me over,” I say. “I was on my bike and a car hit me. They think it might have been deliberate.”

“And they think I did it?”

“No, I … they asked me to give them a list of people who might have grudges against me, and I …” I run a hand over my face. “We fell out about the article you sold, and—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Emma.” She sighs heavily. “That was four years ago. Four years! I told you, the journalist twisted my words. You don’t seriously think I’d try and run you over because of an argument we had four years ago?”

“No, of course I don’t. I—”

“And what’s all this shit about Daisy being alive? Emma …” She sighs again, only this time she sounds exhausted. “I’ve tried so hard to put all that behind me. I’ve got a new life in Brighton. I’m with an amazing girl, Liz. We got engaged last month. I’ve got a good job with Amex and I don’t totally hate it, and life is … it’s okay. It’s good. That’s not to say I don’t think about what happened. I do. But sometimes I forget, too. And it feels good. I feel good. I feel …”

“Normal,” I say.

“Yeah.”

Neither of us says anything for several seconds.

“Someone’s been pretending to be Daisy,” I say. “They’ve been sending me messages on Facebook. They said they were cold, that I’d abandoned her, that I’d left her for dead. Then, after the accident, I got a text message from someone saying ‘Only the good die young, maybe that’s why you’re still alive.’”

Al says nothing.

“Al? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I heard what you said. I was just … Emma, has it occurred to you that maybe it’s some sick internet troll? You hear about this sort of thing all the time – people writing sick things on the memorial pages for people who’ve been murdered or died tragically. They do it to get a reaction, and you’re giving them that.”

“I haven’t.”

“So you didn’t reply?”