‘We’ve confirmed where he’s living, at least,’ he went on. ‘Albeit he’ll probably now only be living there for the time it’ll take to pack a bag and make a few phone calls.’

He gave her a smile, letting her know that he was saying this in good humour, although he wasn’t joking.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she told him.

She had fallen apart the moment Harper looked at her. It reminded her of the first time she got called upon by her teacher to answer a question in primary school. The establish hadn’t gone quite as badly as that, but it clearly wasn’t a great result when the best thing she could say about it was that at least this time she didn’t pee herself.

Didn’t say much for her acting aspirations either. For what was the job Jim had set her, if not acting? For goodness’ sake, it was one of the fig leaves he had given her in order that they could both pretend this wasn’t a charity gig: that he needed someone who could act. He’d even provided a script. Unfortunately, Pete Harper took about half a second to penetrate the fourth wall, and nothing she had learned in college was able to rescue her.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jim assured her, handing her a bunch of paper hankies. ‘It’s early days. Nobody just clicks into this first time.’

Poor Jim. He was so kind, so generous and so fooling nobody. He kept claiming he needed her, but it was obvious that if he genuinely did need an assistant, he’d be better with a personnel deficit than with Jasmine on board. She was the one who needed him: since her mum died, she’d had nobody else.

‘Delta Seven. Subject is walking still walking, approaching Cresswell Lane, and I am struggling to maintain line of sight. Do you have eyeball?’

‘Yes yes,’ she confirmed, having just turned the corner back on to Great George Street.

Following her mother’s death, Jasmine had spent months living in a state of numb subsistence, losing track of the hours, the days and even the weeks. She barely left the house and ceased to function according to normal rhythms, finding herself staring into darkness on the living-room settee far into the night and sound asleep on it throughout the day. She gave no thought to the future, unable to visualise herself doing anything other than crying, sleeping and staring into the unanswering blackness.