After I left Conway’s, I paid a visit to my lawyer, Eddie, in his cramped offices above a building society. Dimly, I resolved that when all this was over, I would find a job of some kind, and take control of my own money. Give piano lessons, maybe. I could do that. The office was overheated, strips of tinsel taped to the filing cabinet in a gesture to the season. It seemed ridiculous to me, that Christmas was so near. What would I even do for it? Spend it alone in my damp cottage, watching my husband’s mistress, pregnant with his child, play happy families across the lane, or wander the streets like a madwoman as I was doing now? If what Conway said was true, Patrick had controlled me just as Nick did Suzi. Kept me medicated, afraid, terrified of losing my mind. Lied to me. Made me doubt the evidence of my eyes. We weren’t so different, Suzi and I – we had both been lied to by my husband. I could feel my plans shifting again, twisting and convoluting as the world changed.

Eddie was there, in an afternoon fug of coffee breath. He was alone, no sign of the ditzy teenage assistant who answered the phone and painted her nails in the office. ‘Elle! How lovely. Kathryn’s gone to the dentist. Did you . . . ?’

‘Sorry, no, I don’t have an appointment. I just need five minutes, if you don’t mind?’

Eddie never minded. He’d seen me through the loss of my family, and of Patrick. It was perhaps because of him, his office here, that I’d settled in Guildford in the first place. He was the nearest thing I had now to relations. I no longer counted my mother – she had been dead to me for decades, even if she was technically still alive. I had always paid for her nursing home from the money I’d inherited direct from my father – none left to her, which must have killed her – but I’d have to think about that, going forward. Now that I was broke. Now everything was different. ‘Of course.’

‘I’d just like an accounts statement. Of everything, all the transactions in the last year.’

‘Well, alright. You know, you could get this yourself if you signed up for online—’

I cut him off again. ‘I will. But for now, please?’