What should she write? What message would keep her options most open?

‘I hope that was okay – it’s been a while since I’ve done anything like that. Don’t tell Rav, and I won’t tell Verity.’

That was good. It sounded like him. Or at least it sounded enough like him that it would be believable. If it needed to be. She deleted the message from his phone as it flashed up on her own screen.

Then she called the car service Max had used earlier. She dropped her voice, low and sad. ‘I need a car, as soon as you can,’ she said. She whispered Max’s address. The woman at the other end of the line sounded suitably worried about her and assured her the car would be there as soon as possible.

On the way to the front door she paused, then went to the kitchen drawer where Verity kept her cigarettes. Took a couple out. Moved the lighter. It was the kind of thing that someone like Verity was certain to notice. Good.

The day after her encounter with Max, Chloe woke up with a feeling that reminded her of her birthday. A mixture of excitement and the anticipation of being disappointed, heavily laced with the guilt of what she had done to Rav. But there was no reason he would ever have to know. And it wasn’t as if she had acted out of lust. She had done what she had to do, for her friend. Any enjoyment she had derived from it was purely physical. Not her fault.

Her skin was raw from where she had scrubbed any trace of Max away, the water from the shower mixing with the tears streaming down her face. She checked her phone constantly, looking again and again at everything she had collected, reassuring herself that she had it all safe, weighing up all the options it gave her. The video of them together. The photographs of the marks on her body in the harsh light of the bathroom. The picture of Max, in bed, naked. The pictures of them together. Now she had to decide what to do next. How best to deploy her hard-won weapons.

Alongside the obsession with Max, with her treasure trove there was something else. A heavy, sticky feeling of grief, unlike the grief she had ever felt before when a grandparent or a much-loved pet ‘passed away’. For the last fifteen years she had indulged in daydreams – not often; once, perhaps twice a month – about a time in the future when she and Zadie would be friends again. When she would be able to share everything she did with her, when Zadie would sprinkle her very special brand of magic over their lives. She had created a version of Zadie as an adult, all her selfish, frightening tendencies wiped away by age but the sparkle still entirely present.