“I’m sorry, I just don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough. This person hasn’t just written letters. He’s been in my flat.”

“He may have been.” Carthy gave a long-suffering sigh. “Very well. Let’s think about a couple of things.” There was a moment’s pause. “Your flat. Is it easy of access?”

I shrugged.

“It’s just a normal conversion. There’s a common entranceway from Holloway Road. There’s a pub patio thing next to the backyard behind.”

Carthy wrote something on a large pad of paper that was balanced on his knee. I couldn’t see whether he was taking notes or just doodling.

“Do many people visit your flat?”

“How do you mean?”

“One a week? Two a week? On average.”

“I can’t answer it in that way. I’ve got friends. A bunch of them came round for a drink last week. I’ve got a new boyfriend. He’s been around quite a few times.” More scribbles on the pad. “Oh, and the flat’s been on the market for six months.”

Carthy raised an eyebrow.

“Which means that people have been visiting the flat?” he said.

“Obviously.”

“How many?”

“A lot. Over the entire six months there must have been sixty, seventy, maybe more.”

“Have any people come more than once?”

“A few. I want them to come more than once.”

“Have any of them seemed strange in some way?”

I couldn’t help laughing grimly.

“About three-quarters of them. I mean, they’re complete strangers rummaging through my cupboards, opening drawers. That’s what it’s like trying to sell your home.”

Carthy didn’t smile back.

“There are various motives for harassment of this kind. The most common is of a private nature.” He was sounding embarrassed. “Do you mind if I ask you some personal questions?”

“Not if they’re relevant.”

“You said you have a new boyfriend. How new?”

“Two or three weeks. Very new.”

“Does that mean that a previous relationship ended?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean no. I wasn’t in a relationship.”

“But have you had a recent personal, that is, er, sexual liaison?”

“Well, fairly recent.” I was blushing hopelessly.

“Did it break up painfully?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. Now it was my turn to go red. “I’ve seen a few people at different times.”

“A few?” He and Aldham exchanged a significant look.

“Look, that sounds wrong.” I was flustered. I knew what they were both thinking, and there was nothing I could say that wouldn’t make it worse. What made it so ludicrous is that compared to almost anyone I know, I’m a nun: an awkward, embarrassed, inarticulate nun, too. “I’ve gone out with, seen, whatever you call it, two men in the last year or so.” They both went on looking at me as if they were not at all convinced by this low number. “The last of them was months ago.”

“Did it end badly?”

I thought of sitting opposite Stuart in a café near Camden Lock. I gave a sad laugh.

“It just fizzled out, really. Anyway, the last I heard he was hitchhiking across Australia. You can cross him off the list of suspects.”

Carthy gave a loud click of his ballpoint pen and stood up.

“DS Aldham will help you fill out a case form and take a brief statement.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve told you.”

“I mean, to catch him?”

“If anything else happens, give Aldham a ring and we’ll take it from there. Oh, and take sensible precautions in your private life for a while.”

“I told you, I’ve got a boyfriend.”

He nodded curtly and turned away, muttering something I couldn’t hear under his breath.

EIGHT

I was late arriving at school. Even later than I’d said. When I walked out of the police station, I felt so tired I thought my legs would give way beneath me. My skin felt dusty, gritty, under my cotton dress. My scalp itched. My mouth was ashy. My shoulders were full of vicious little knots, bubbles of stress. When I walked out into the glare of the sunlight, my eyes, which already felt sunken back into their sockets, throbbed painfully. I screwed them up against the dazzle and fumbled in my bag for my dark glasses. Damn. I’d forgotten them. And my vitamin tablets. And I had only one more cigarette left. For a moment, I thought of going back to the flat and having a bath, cleaning my teeth, pulling myself together, before going to school. Or even just going to one of the nearby parks and sitting on the yellowing patches of grass by the side of a pond, watching the ducks, closing my eyes.

Instead I bought two packs of cigarettes, a cheap pair of sunglasses from a roadside stall, and then guiltily slunk into a greasy-spoon café. I ordered two cups of black coffee and a poached egg on toast. I ate slowly, watching people pass outside the smeary window. A Rasta in a yellow cap. A teenage couple, arm in arm, who stopped to kiss every couple of steps. A group of Japanese tourists with cameras and wearing jerseys. Surely they must be lost. A man carrying a baby in a sling; I could just see its tufty head. A woman screaming at the minute, red-faced child at her side. An Indian woman draped in a scarlet sari, picking her way in delicate sandals through dog shit and litter. A flock of schoolchildren carrying swimming bags, herded across the blaring, fume-filled road by a harassed young woman who reminded me of me. A cyclist in fluorescent yellow shorts, head down, swerving in and out of the traffic on thin wheels. A woman with a wide-brimmed hat, a bosom like a shelf, and a tiny poodle, who looked as if she had stepped into the wrong story.

I had stepped into the wrong story. He could be looking at me at this moment. Maybe I could see him, if I knew where to look. What had I done, that this should happen to me? I lit a cigarette, drank my cooling, bitter coffee. I was so late now a few more minutes wouldn’t make any difference.

Before catching my bus up Kingsland Road, I passed a phone box and I had the stupidest impulse to phone my mother. My mother who hadn’t been alive for twelve years. I just wanted her to tell me everything was going to be okay.

Pauline was politely chilly with me when I arrived. She told me a man named Fred had called. He had asked me to phone him on his mobile during the day. She didn’t seem happy to be collecting messages from a boyfriend for an absent member of staff. The primary assistant who was sitting in for me had the children in plastic pinafores, mixing up paints with thick brushes. So I told them they all had to draw a portrait of themselves to put up on the wall before parents’ evening. Raj painted himself with a pale pink face and brown hair, and legs sticking straight out of his chin. Eric, who never smiles, gave himself a red mouth that stretched from ear to ear. Stacey spilled water all over Tara’s efforts and Tara hit her in the neck. Damian started crying, tears dripping onto the paper. I took him into the home corner and asked him what was wrong, and he told me that everyone picked on him, called him sissy, pushed him over on the playground, locked him in the toilet. I looked at him: a pale and snuffly creature with clothes that hung off his skinny frame and dirty ears.

Fred wanted me to come and watch him play five-a-side football that evening. They played every Wednesday, he said-a regular lads’ feature. He was cheerful and laid-back, as if nothing had happened last night. He told me he was deadheading roses in suburbia, but he kept thinking about my body.

Pauline told me I had to have my literacy-hour material ready by the end of the week and did I think that was possible. Oh yes, I replied, unconvincingly, head throbbing. I usually buy a roll with cheese and tomato at the sandwich bar on the way to school, but today I’d forgotten, so while the other teachers ate healthy sandwiches and fruit, I had boiled potatoes and baked beans from the obese dinner lady, followed by steamed pudding and custard. Comfort food: It made me feel better.