She makes her way home, climbs the damp, greasy staircase to the flat which, until the early hours of this morning, she shared with Satnam. At the top of the stairs she stops and fingers the keys in her backpack and alights on Satnam’s phone. A bloom of relief that the police had believed her when she’d said she didn’t have it. The desire she had only moments ago for a cup of tea and some Marmite toast has gone now. She feels dirty, itchy. Making her way to the tiny bathroom, she pulls off her clothes, dives in the shower with the water on its hottest setting and scrubs herself with a nailbrush until her skin hurts. Afterwards, she opens the bathroom door and takes a step out. The door to Satnam’s room which remains half open from when last night, in a panic, Nevis rushed in, hoping against hope that the woman on the other end of the phone was wrong, that there had been some mistake and that the Satnam she knew and loved was fast asleep in her room. Inside the room empty air stirs. On the bedside table sits the opened bottle of vodka Satnam must have thought would give her courage. Nevis wonders now if she should have told the police everything she knew and whether not telling them had simply added to her betrayal but it is too late now. She has lied to them, or, at least, failed to tell the truth and there is no way back from that.

She shuts the door to Satnam’s bedroom and moves through the hallway to her own. Shaking out the coverlet and laying it over the bed, she picks up the lamp and bends the dent in the lampshade strut back to the perpendicular, straightens the poster and replaces the socks in their colour coded pockets in the drawer. Finally, she puts her own phone and Satnam’s on to charge. Her shift at the chippy starts in four hours. Till then, what’s called for is sleep. She falls into bed naked, screws her eyes shut and waits. From two floors down the rumble of traffic makes its way into her bones before it reaches the ear. Twenty minutes later her head is still swimming. Getting up, she pulls on fresh underwear, a clean pair of Levi’s 501s and one of her several identical long-sleeved Breton tees. In some corner of her mind a small, angry red top spins. How strange that she should be angry. But perhaps in the circumstances anger is forgivable or even normal? Or perhaps it’s just a defence to make the guilt endurable.

There are things you don’t know about, Nevis.

She wonders if all this will make her crazy.