This was progress. She gave herself a metaphorical pat on the back. She was intrigued at this glimpse of the woman before the crime – the mother fresh from the hairdresser who picked her child up late from nursery and took her to the park. She was just the same as any other working mother: distracted but indulgent, doing her best. Emma could only see her as she was right now in that psychiatric wing, sitting in that chair covered in burns, bruises and wounds; her bald head, the fuzzy red clumps, her bloodshot eyes with no whites at all, only pinks and reds; every blood vessel on her face burst open, and those dreadful marks around her neck – purple, black and blue streaked across her throat like some ghastly necklace. Everything she said was delivered in that awful rasping voice like something from a horror movie. The police report said she’d wrapped the seatbelt around her neck, doubly determined in her search for oblivion. And in some way she had succeeded in her mission: was it surprising that she remembered nothing? Or was it the magic of the human brain, protecting her to the last with one sole objective: survival.

Emma went upstairs and began to run a bath; her attention was caught by the remnants of a bottle of Jo Malone bath oil, an old present from Simon’s sister a few Christmases ago. She opened it, sniffed it and got a whiff of that other Connie Mortensen with her glossy red hair, nothing to do with that small, fierce figure sitting there in that desolate room with the harsh fluorescent light, staring out of the window.

Emma filled the Jo Malone bottle with water and shook it up and down before pouring it slowly underneath the tap. It smelt so good. She popped it into the bin, catching her body unawares in the mirror, before she had time to kid herself with the tummy-suck. It was depressing. She looked down. Gravity had taken its toll, the snail-slither stretch marks shining in stripes under the overhead light. Mercifully the steam began to obscure her reflection. She turned off the tap. She could hear the rain lashing against the windowpane.