‘I’ll be careful,’ I say. ‘I promise. But also, have you met me?’ I smile. ‘I’m the girl who writes about how to get out of duct tape. I’m the girl who told you to scratch a guy’s face if you’re ever attacked so he knows he’ll have to answer questions about it if you turn up dead. I’m the girl who knows how to get out of a car boot. Good luck to any psycho who tries that shit on,’ I say.

She squeezes my hand.

‘I just…’ she starts. ‘I wish you’d just come home. I wish I’d never sent you the advert for this job. Then you’d still be living in London and you’d be safe.’

‘But also, I’d still be miserable. A tabloid wrote that article. I’m not sure we should be basing our life choices on anything they say, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, wiping her tears away. ‘I’m just scared.’

‘I know,’ I say, gently. ‘And if I could come home I would. But I’ve worked so hard to get here. And I finally have something of my own. I can’t just run away from that.’

She sniffs back tears.

‘Okay?’

She nods and I get up.

‘So, I’m going to go pee, and then I’m going to make us some camomile tea, and then we are going to watch something super funny on Netflix. Yes?’

She nods again and I smile. I head to the kitchen and flick on the kettle, then go through to the loo. But as I close the door behind me, all I can hear is my pulse in my ears, and when I sit down my vision gets fuzzy. Because I’m great at calming other people down, defusing things with humour and keeping my shit together in a crisis. But sitting here with just my own thoughts, I can’t help but wonder, What if Camilla’s right?

Chapitre Vingt-trois

Chapitre vingt-trois

‘You’re in early,’ Wesley says, plonking himself down in his chair.

I glance up at him and give a small nod.

And as I watch him lean forward and stab his password into his keyboard, I can’t help but wonder what his Tinder profile might look like. Is he smiling in his pictures? Does his bio say: friendly, kind, normal guy seeks kindred spirit? What would I do if I saw him on an app, the way Camilla saw her new guy?

What if I accidentally super-swiped him?

I shake the thoughts away and look back at the street scene on my screen. I’ve been in since 7 am, wading through footage on that hard drive Sabine’s mother pressed into my hands on Friday. Needing there to be another angle on there somewhere; another way for me to write her story.