Yes, that’s true. I love Adam. I didn’t love Gavin. I thought I loved King Edward, but I was wrong.

“Our emails became very graphic very quickly,” I say. “It was . . . I’m not making an excuse, but it felt as if my brain had been taken over by a kind of fever.”

It always does. Every time. You like the fever, don’t you? You need it.

“I wasn’t me; I was this . . . lust-crazed maniac. I had no idea what this man looked like, but it made no difference. It was the things he said about my body and what he’d like to do to it that got me hooked on him.”

“So he didn’t send you photographs?”

“No. I never asked him to, and he never offered. I liked him being no more than words on a screen. No personality, no history, just . . . words, and sexual demands. That suited me. It made me feel less guilty—less like I had another man. He could have been some kind of computer program.

“The photographs—the ones I sent him—became a regular thing. I tried to make them as varied as possible, which was hard because the subject matter was always the same: my breasts. Sometimes in the bedroom mirror, sometimes an aerial shot, sometimes in a bathroom stall of a restaurant.” I take a deep breath. Adam squeezes my hand. “And once—only once, on June fifth this year—in a supermarket parking lot, in broad daylight, with other people around. I thought no one was close enough to see. I took off my shirt and my bra and took a picture of myself topless. With my phone. It wasn’t very good, so I took another one, and then another. That was what I always did, until I had one from that particular batch that I thought was good enough to send to Gavin. I don’t know how I could have forgotten where I was, or the danger of being seen, but I did. I got so caught up in what I was doing: mentally, physically. I suppose it’s a bit like having sex in public—people do that, don’t they?”

Sergeant Zailer nods.