I look around inside. Everything is just as it was last time I was here: a brown leather sofa, a bookshelf, his bed, perfectly made with hospital corners, is in the far side of the room and that ugly painting sits above it, watching me. Judging me the way he has from the very first time he saw me.

Thomas’s computer is sitting on a desk against the wall and there are a few wires around it. I search for a phone charging cord but there isn’t one. Shit.

I reach for my phone and reply to Thomas. What time do you think you’ll be done? Should I come over?

I stare down at the screen, waiting for typing bubbles…

Waiting.

Waiting.

And then there they are. They stop. They start again. And in comes his message: It’s going to be an all nighter.

Brilliant.

I go to the kitchen, flick on the kettle and type back: Tomorrow then. See you soon.

And then, while the sound of the kettle humming fills the empty flat, I quickly go to my photographs and email the ones I took in the gallery last night to my Gmail account. I hear the whoosh of them sending. And then, with five per cent battery left on my phone, I pull up Safari and type: How to reset the password on a MacBook Pro.

Chapitre Trente-cinq

Chapitre trente-cinq

Fifteen minutes later my tea has been replaced by the Scotch I located in Thomas’s upper left cupboard, my phone is dead, Sabine’s hard drive has been plugged into Thomas’s computer and I’m typing the word ‘evidence’ into the subject field of an email. I reach for my Scotch and take a sip, waiting for the heat in my throat to slow my blood, then drag the files from the unnamed folder on Sabine’s drive into the message body.

I’ve already pulled the photographs from my Gmail onto Thomas’s perfectly organised desktop, and so I drag those in too.

Am I one hundred per cent comfortable sending everything I have to Hyacinth? No. It’s a risk. But I don’t really have a choice here. I’m being followed. I need this story out there so Noah is released; so Agnès Bisset has no reason left to silence me. And Hyacinth definitely won’t publish it without evidence. So here we are.

I type: Hi Hyacinth, here is the supporting evidence. Harper.

And then I finally press send.

Then it’s simply a matter of deleting the files from the desktop so Thomas doesn’t know I was here, and double-clicking on the trashcan icon. Mine are the only files in there as I press ‘empty’. The sound of it emptying echoes off the walls.