“Yeah. Emma, she was obsessed with him. She really wasn’t well. That’s why she was hospitalised. She used the last of Isaac’s money to fly to Aberdeen, then she started hassling his best friend, some guy the Salvation Army had put her in touch with.”

“I read about him in one of her emails.”

“Yeah, so she started hassling him and was arrested for putting a brick through the window of his car when he wouldn’t tell her where Isaac was. She was in such a state when the police interviewed her – hearing voices, threatening suicide, seeing things, that sort of thing – that they called in a doctor. And he had her sectioned. She said she liked the hospital. Everyone was nice to her, and no one judged her, and she made some nice friends, but then they decided she was well enough to leave and she felt like it was Ekanta Yatra all over again.”

“Her happiness taken away?”

“Yeah, and she convinced herself that you were the reason why. I didn’t realise that until we got in the car. She’d convinced me that Daisy was alive and she knew where she was. She started ranting the second we hit the motorway; it was as though she’d kept it all corked up inside her until then. She threatened to throw herself out of the car if I didn’t help her. She opened the door twice on the M4. I nearly crashed trying to yank her back in.”

“That’s why you rang me?”

“Yeah. She told me what to say to you. I was planning on pulling into a service station to call you from the loos, but she grabbed my phone and threw it out of the window. I had no choice but to keep driving. I thought that, once we got to your house, we could call for a doctor, or something, but she convinced me to go to Green Fields. She said there was a volunteer evening, that you’d be there.”

“And when she realised wasn’t …”

“She set light to it any way. She wanted to destroy everything you love.” Al pulled the dressing gown more tightly around her. “She knew a lot about you, Emma. She knew about your boyfriend, and your little girl.”

“Chloe is my boyfriend Will’s daughter.”