Stacey has never had friends. But she learned the hard way survival depended on fitting in. She didn’t ever want to go back to the place they sent her after she smashed the face of the boy who tried to kiss her with a rounders bat. So she figured out how to censor what she really thinks. She learned to mimic the appropriate reactions and behave the way the world expected her to behave, to hide in plain sight, to blend in: she’s done it so well she’s built a career based on her ability to empathise and feel your pain. But the constant effort required to pretend to be normal is exhausting.

And it’s lonely.

It’s like being immersed in a foreign language: sometimes she just wants to speak plainly and be understood.

Peter understands.

Stacey saw what Peter did that day at the Hurlingham Club. She saw him pull Archie beneath the water while everyone was distracted by the antics of the two Conway boys, and for a moment, as she watched and did nothing, she allowed herself to imagine Archie gone and Peter her son instead.

Peter saw her watching him, and something passed between them: an understanding, a recognition that transcended ten-year-old boy, thirty-eight-year-old woman. She saw him. He was a child like she had been: a child who lied all the time, who broke things, who bruised his classmates, who hurt people. He couldn’t help it. He was biologically wired not to feel shame or fear or guilt. He’d been born without the ability to empathise, to put yourself in my shoes, just as some people are born without limbs. It wasn’t his fault – any more than it had been hers.

She wanted to teach Peter everything she knew, to mentor him, to protect him, to see him flourish and become who he was born to be. For the first time in her life she understood what it was to feel like a mother.

So she told him about Felix.

Her phone rings suddenly, and she glances at the number: DS Mehdi again. She wants to ignore it, but he’s already called twice this afternoon, and the last thing she needs is for him to turn up at the house.

‘Stay here,’ she tells Peter, as she shuts herself in her bedroom. ‘Wait for your mother. She won’t be long.’

DS Mehdi is just checking in, he tells her, but Stacey knows the avalanche of publicity around the video is making the detective look at her seriously again. He’s always been the one she feared. She’s on the phone longer than she’d like, and when she finally ends the call and goes back into the kitchen, Peter isn’t there.

She knows where he is.