Ziva called in ten minutes later, her face scarlet, hair bristling, hands wringing with distress. ‘The H boys are gone.’

It felt as though a trapdoor had opened in the kitchen floor right where I stood. To my relief, at that point the police officer arrived, a woman in her fifties who firstly insisted we called her Brenda and secondly took charge with a brisk efficiency that was simultaneously reassuring and intimidating in equal measure.

Having relayed why we had called her, and gone over the little we knew, she then asked the question I had been dreading.

‘Has anything like this happened before?’

I took a deep breath, kept my eyes firmly in Brenda’s direction and away from Daniel, Becky and Ziva. ‘Yes.’

Brenda’s eyes flicked to Daniel, sitting beside me, who had gone rigid.

‘Can you tell me about it, please?’

‘Um. Before moving here, I was a journalist. I wrote food reviews, and a few other things, and sometimes… people sent me… messages…’

Brenda, sensing I was on the brink of choking on my own witness statement, carefully put down her pen and notepad.

‘Dr Solomon, Becky, I think I’ve got all I need from you, for now. Please don’t let me take up any more of your day.’

Taking the hint, they made their excuses and left.

‘Okay, Eleanor. Take your time. You were telling me about your previous messages?’

I nodded. Daniel was gripping his coffee mug so hard his knuckles were white.

‘I had the usual trolling on social media. Letters to the paper I worked for, comments on my blog. It was nothing unusual, never anything extreme enough to worry about.’

‘And then…?’

‘And then…’

And then I told her about the messages to my phone, the heart in the box, and the middle of the night phone messages, and with every word Daniel grew even more still.

‘And have you heard anything since?’

Oh boy.

‘Yes.’ My voice broke. I swallowed, taking a moment to breathe in some much-needed air before I continued. ‘I bought a new phone, but I’ve had a couple of messages to my old one.’

‘Can I see them?’

As I pulled my old phone out of my hoodie pocket and handed it to Brenda, to my enormous relief Daniel’s own phone rang. He glanced at it before pushing back his chair, swearing under his breath.

‘I have to take this.’

‘Of course, no problem.’ Brenda smiled. She waited for him to leave before looking me straight in the eye. ‘Now, are you going to tell me what’s really going on?’

So, with many more choked back tears, my head hung in shame, I told her precisely that.

An hour or so later, Brenda left, taking my old phone with her. She’d said that the obvious place to start was trying to locate the Alamis, but she would also look into the other restaurants that the stalker had messaged me about on the night I left London. She’d call Miles Greenbank at the newspaper, as well as seeing if she could get any more information from my parents. Another priority, of course, was to speak to Lucy. Although it seemed clear the animosity was aimed at me, and the chilling discovery about the missing H boys suggested their focus was now here, not in London, Lucy needed to know what was happening. She also had all the new passwords for Nora’s social media accounts, so we needed that information from her, too.