‘That must be frightening.’

‘The police think it’s a crank.’

‘You’ve been to the police again?’ She doesn’t sigh but she doesn’t have to.

‘Of course I have. I’m being threatened.’

‘What do the letters say?’

‘Four days. Three. It’s a countdown to the anniversary. Who knows what might happen then? The police don’t class it as an actual threat but it feels like it.’

‘Is there anything else I should know, Leah?’

I hesitate. I haven’t told her I think he’s snatched Marie. I want her to agree to take me back as a client before I tell her that.

‘I don’t think there’s anything else,’ I say. If I tell her about the old newspapers in the staffroom she might not believe me and I don’t have them to show her as proof. The reappearance of Fregoli is one thing but I can’t have her questioning my mental capacity. She – teamed with the police – could section me and I have to be around to protect my family. No matter what everyone says, I’m not convinced it isn’t him I’m seeing, but without her help I’ll never be sure. I’m not certain it’s the Fregoli Syndrome playing tricks on me. Hiding in plain sight, they call it. With my medical history he could be standing right in front of me and I’d have no way of knowing if it was actually him or someone else and I was just seeing his face.

Unless he hurt me.

Three days.

The letters sound like a warning.

And although I know with my track record no one will believe me, I do think he has come back to hurt me.

Three days.

And there’s only me who will be able to stop him.

‘I’ll help you,’ she says eventually. ‘But not now. I’ve a client due in ten minutes.’

We fix up an appointment. ‘Go straight home and get some rest,’ she says as she sees me out.

‘I will, once I’ve picked up my car,’ I promise but it’s a lie. I’m not going home but I can’t tell her where I’m going.

She wouldn’t approve.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Leah

Now

I’m steeling myself to knock on the door. It is after lunch but all the curtains are drawn. There’s no telling if Mum is here. This isn’t the home I was born in – but the council house we’d moved to after her divorce from Dad. We all left years ago and I thought she’d move but she’s stayed local, even though Dad didn’t and sometimes I wonder why. She doesn’t have much of a relationship with us. She doesn’t have much of a relationship with anyone. The town had judged and found her guilty of lacking the skills a mother should have. The ability to keep her children safe.

My memories of my childhood are divided into a definite before and after. An invisible glass wall separating the people we were from the people we all became. Sometimes, in my dreams I’m pressing my face against that glass wall – the way Bruno pressed his nose against the patio doors, his breath fogging the glass – watching the versions of us who were happy and healthy and loved.