‘Jamie, mind where you’re… Hey, are you alright?’

He couldn’t speak. He just stood there, staring at her, mute.

‘Jamie, what’s happened? What’s wrong?’

He still couldn’t speak or move. He seemed to have gone into some sort of catatonic state.

‘Jamie? Wake up?’

He blinked at her, and she slowly came into focus. ‘Mary,’ he whispered.

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s get you back in your flat.’

‘No! I don’t want to.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

He shook his head.

‘OK, come on. Let’s get you upstairs.’

She led him up the stairs. He was in a trance, and the next thing he knew he was sitting on Mary’s sofa, beside Lennon, who was purring steadily. Mary bent over him and offered him a mug of hot, steaming liquid. Jamie sniffed it. Some kind of herbal tea. Ugh.

‘What’s the matter, Jamie?’ she said.

‘It’s…everything.’

‘Has something happened to Kirsty?’

He shook his head. ‘She’s gone. She left me.’

She nodded. He guessed she had probably figured that out already. After all, Kirsty hadn’t been around for a while.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she said.

He sipped the tea. He was beginning to feel a little calmer, but his mind was still racing, remembering what he had read in Letitia’s letter. ‘You remember I asked you for the address of Letitia and David? I received a letter from them today.’

Mary shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. What’s that got to do with Kirsty?’

‘No. It’s not Kirsty – it’s Lucy and Chris.’

‘What about them?’

He sighed. And then he told Mary everything, right from the beginning: from the first hoax, when the fire brigade turned up at his party, through the dead rats (‘I’m embarrassed to admit that I suspected Lennon at first,’ he said) and the letters and Paul’s supposed accident and the spiders and Kirsty’s miscarriage, all the way through to the second incident with the fire brigade. The only bit he left out was the part about the men he had given the money to. He was too ashamed to tell her about that.

After he had finished telling her she was silent for a while. Eventually she said, ‘My God, Jamie. I had no idea. I knew you were having some sort of problems, but I thought maybe it was just the worry of starting a family. I’ve never liked Lucy and Chris. I always thought there was something a bit nasty about them, but I really didn’t think–’ She shrugged. ‘Well, who would? It’s not the kind of thing that’s supposed to happen in real life, is it?’

‘I know.’

‘Poor Kirsty. Poor you.’

‘And Letitia and David too. The letter I got from them today explained that they’d been through pretty much the same as us.’