Most people would have said, ‘It’s okay, we have plenty of time,’ or words to that effect. Waterhouse says, ‘I have to hear it, so … maybe condense it down a bit if it’s really long.’

Thanks for your sensitivity, mate.

‘Bullet points?’ I smile. If I could summarise it all in list form, it would be less likely to upset me. ‘I’m not sure there’s a short version, to be honest. My mother fell pregnant with me at fifteen and my father ran for the hills when he found out. My mum begged to keep me – I found this out later from her best friend at the time – but her parents, Marion and Trevor, were worried about the shame she’d bring on the family. This was 1971, so I don’t know how bad it would have been for them – it was hardly the 1840s or anything, but I suppose if you’re the respectable façade type … and my grandparents definitely were. So I was given up for adoption.

‘Mr and Mrs Tribbeck adopted me. That’s how I think of them in my head: Mr and Mrs Tribbeck. They were good people, they did their best, but I’m not in touch with them any more. Not a day went by when they didn’t demonstrate that, while they adored their three flesh-and-blood children, I was their good deed. They approved of themselves for having taken me on. For my whole childhood I was the perfect, well-mannered, parent-pleasing suck-up – top grades at school, Duke of Edinburgh Award star, tidying my room every night even when it didn’t need tidying—’

‘That doesn’t sound like you,’ Waterhouse cuts in.

I laugh. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘You’re a big part of a big case – means I need to find out about you. I’ve watched some of your stuff online. You portray yourself as a rebel, always doing what you want no matter what the world thinks. Going your own way.’

‘Yeah, that’s me now. I’m bright enough to realise when a tactic’s not working. Being the perfect child didn’t make me or anyone else feel I was a proper member of the Tribbeck family. I was a lonely, unhappy kid and now I’m a lonely, unhappy adult, but at least I get to be myself and make other people unhappy too – you’d be surprised how much that takes the edge off.’

Waterhouse scowls into the dregs of his coffee. I’m sensing that of all the people he’s ever met, I’m the one he disapproves of most. At the same time, he strikes me as the sort of man who might make everyone feel that way.

‘That was a joke,’ I explain. ‘Well, partly. Don’t worry, I’m not expecting sympathy. I was trying to make you laugh, but … I can see that was overly ambitious.’