A pause. She bit her lip, and even though she was devastated, she looked so pretty, flushed and tearful, her red hair falling down around her face. ‘Where would I go?’

‘If it’s that bad, you should leave.’

She shredded the tissue in her hands. ‘I know he loves me. He just – he doesn’t trust me any more.’

I didn’t say that I could see his point. It wouldn’t have been helpful. ‘Oh?’ I waited. I’d learned, over the years, to use silence as a tool. Another skill gained at Uplands.

She took a big shuddering sigh. ‘It isn’t the first time I’ve done – this.’

And there it was. She told me a story about another man, another affair earlier in the year. ‘Not an affair’ was how she described it, but it was, all the same. ‘We worked together. I thought we were friends. We used to go for drinks, lunch. Chat over the messaging system. Then one night . . .’

She told me the story of the pub, his hand on her leg. The alleyway. Kissing. Then more. Her bag dropped into a puddle of urine, and this was a detail that seemed to obsess her, for some reason, a sign of her degradation and shame. ‘I never meant for it to happen.’ There was that same phrase. Did she even realise? How many things happened to this woman that she didn’t intend?

‘Oh Suzi. You have been through a lot.’ And I took her in my arms, and she cried against my shoulder, leaving it damp and salty. I actually meant it. It was hard to look at her distress and stay unmoved, even when she spoke of her affairs. And this other man – was there a way to use that, to get what I wanted?

‘I’m a bad person,’ she said, when she came up for air. ‘Twice! I can’t believe it. I never meant – I never thought. God, what a mess. What can I do, Nora?’

‘The baby – is it Nick’s?’

I had learned to read her eye movements. ‘I – I don’t know.’ Maybe she couldn’t say it out loud, this extra shame. Probably she really wasn’t sure, but she must have an inkling. I wondered what she had told him. Sean, as he called himself. If he’d known about the baby, before the accident. She wiped her face. ‘I haven’t any money of my own. I don’t know where I’d go – I can’t be in a flat-share if I’m pregnant. I’m just so confused.’

‘It’s OK. I’ll help you.’

She looked up, eyes shining through tears. ‘Oh Nora. Will you really? You see, I’m just so alone. I can’t tell anyone else about this, they’d hate me.’

‘Of course I will.’ I patted her hand. ‘Suzi, this is important. Have you thought about what you’ll tell the police?’