‘It was a Mrs Ros Coverley from the Whitstable branch of Harrison and Uttley Properties who put the warning out,’ says Bains, his deadpan voice cutting through my thoughts.

At the mention of that name I’m taken back to the disastrous viewing of an eco house in Whitstable, Ros Coverley watching me like a hawk as I walked from room to room.

‘Mrs Coverley noticed, right at the beginning of the viewing, when you opened your purse to put away the business card she’d given you, that the name on your credit card was not the name you had given her: Eleanor Hawkins.’

I flinch as I recall that viewing. Ros Coverley’s eyes watching me.

‘After you left that day, Mrs Coverley did a cursory search of your name and found that you were not a wealthy financier but a marketing manager for a cosmetics company. Yet when she contacted the company – Luna London – to ask about you, they said that you no longer worked for them.’

My cheeks burn as he continues.

‘She’d heard, from colleagues in other offices, of a woman doing the same thing – wasting their time, using fake names – so she put an email out to them, flagging you up and telling them to be aware. One of the agents, Jane Treadwell, recalled a viewing she’d conducted a few months earlier with someone who matched your description. She was shocked because the woman she had met had seemed – how did she put it? – “so convincing”.’

I feel sick with shame.

‘Of course, there’s no crime in doing what you did, Vanessa. But the amount of planning and subterfuge involved is quite something. And we can now safely say that it was you who visited the offices of Price Burrows Estate Agents on the 11th of August using the name Iris Lawson, can’t we?’

There’s no crime in doing what you did. His words roll around my head. There’s no crime. He just wants to ask me some questions, rule me out.

He takes my silence for affirmation.

‘So now that’s clear,’ he says, putting his hands to his temples, ‘how about you tell me what happened that afternoon at Holly Maze House?’

‘I didn’t go to the house.’

The lie drops easily from my lips, though somewhere inside me a voice is screaming: What are you doing, Vanessa? This is going to make it so much worse.

But then I haven’t been able to do what’s best for me for a long time now.

‘I’m sorry, could you speak up?’ says Bains, pushing the Dictaphone into the centre of the table. ‘I didn’t quite catch that.’

Come on, Vanessa, urges the voice inside me, just tell him the truth. Don’t dig yourself in deeper. But I can’t do it. I can’t admit that I was in that house.