All right, I’m guilty of superstitious idiocy, but nothing else. If it’s him, he’s here on Elmhirst Road by chance—pure coincidence, just as it was last time we met. He’s a police officer who works in Spilling; Elmhirst Road is in Spilling: his presence here, for reasons that have nothing to do with me, is entirely plausible.

Rationally, the argument stands up, but I’m not convinced.

Because you’re a superstitious fool.

If it’s him, that means I’m still guilty, deep down. If he sees me . . .

I can’t let that happen. His eyes on me, even for a second, would act as a magnet, dragging the badness inside me up to the surface of my skin, making it spill out into the open; it would propel me back to where I was when he first found me: the land of the endangered.

I don’t deserve that. I have been good for three weeks and four days. Even in the privacy of my mind, where any transgressions would be unprovable, I haven’t slipped up. Once or twice my thoughts have almost broken free of my control, but I’ve been disciplined about slamming down the barriers.

Turn around, quick, before he does.

Can I risk it?

A minute ago, there were at least fifteen cars between mine and where he’s standing on the pavement, a few hundred meters ahead. There are still about ten, at a rough guess. If one of the drivers in front of me would do a U-turn and go back the way they came, I’d do the same, but he’s more likely to notice me if I’m the first to do it. He might recognize my car, remember the make and model—maybe even the license plate. Not that he’s turned around yet, but he could be about to. Any second now . . .

He’d wonder why I was doubling back on myself. The traffic isn’t at a standstill. True, we’re crawling along, but it’s unlikely to take me more than ten minutes to get past whatever’s causing the delay. All I can see from my car is a female police officer in the road, standing up straight, then bobbing down out of sight; standing up again, bobbing down again. I think she must be saying something to the driver of each car that passes. There’s another male officer too, on the pavement, talking to . . .

Not him. Talking to a man who, please God, isn’t him.

Inhale. Long and deep.

I can’t do it. The presence of the right words in my mind is not enough to drive away the panic, not when I’m breathing jagged and fast like this.