Roxy speaks to Ellis and me again, almost pretending Booker isn’t there to hear it, and despite everything, the attention is welcome. ‘Fine, I’ll play the part of Sandown’s wound,’ she says in a low growl, ‘but I’ll make damn sure it never heals.’

I think back to the woman watching me in the woods, who I thought I was imagining, who I thought was Celeste. That night at the police station, then while I was running in the morning –

‘I saw you,’ I say.

Roxy smiles at me, a horrible heavy smile. ‘I hated every last one of them and it’s an understatement to say it’s been an unencumbered joy to watch them rot.’ She leans back on the sofa.

I think about what Lenore said: how it was the horror of Roxy’s life, that she wanted nothing more than to leave but couldn’t bring herself to.

‘All people will do,’ she says, her tone now unsettlingly sing-song, ‘is disappoint you and hurt you.’

I’m conscious of Ellis beside me. She should be saying this to him. I’ve hurt him so thoroughly.

‘The sooner you understand this,’ she says, ‘the better. The only damn person on this planet I can trust is myself. The only way to discover who you are is to be alone. I mean this. People don’t change in solitude! They become who they’re meant to be.’

And this? This is who you’re meant to be?

‘I’ll be honest,’ I say finally, trying to put the words together before I have to say them, ‘we might have figured out what happened to you – but we had you all wrong. People said that you were angry, jaded, fought against everything that moved. And retrospectively, as someone who’s been trying to find you, there’s something almost … romantic about that. About a talented and enigmatic musician who writes about solitude and then goes missing.’

‘Damn right there is.’

‘I related to it. And I understood it, because there’s a lot I don’t like about people either. But now that I’m here looking at you and hearing you talk, I’m thinking, actually, it’s just incredibly sad.’

She’s silent. My blood runs cold.

‘Is that really what you planned to do?’ I ask. ‘Torment everyone until you got bored, thinking that was some kind of purpose; then just lay down here and die?’

‘Mmm. Till I heard about the storm,’ she says. And it’s with such a quiet calm, such submission, that I know what it really means – she’d thought it had come for her. To both serve her and claim her.