It’s clear now that Melia counted on my compliance, my cowardice, my lack of imagination. I followed her breadcrumb trail like a middle-aged Hansel, into the lair of a wide-eyed, open-legged witch.

And so did you, Kit, so did you. Talk about divide and rule! What if you and I had compared notes, even just a single time? What if I’d heeded your warning, that night on the steps at Prospect Square? Don’t do it, will you? You don’t need to fall for her drama . . . You’d be alive and I’d be free.

But you know what they say are the two most heartbreaking words in the English language?

What if.

Or, if they don’t, they really should.

*

I have to tell you, I think they overdid it, her detectives. Actor friends of hers, I’m guessing, because to the unsuspecting eye they were really very good. Naturalistic, composed, fluent. You probably know them, perhaps from drama school or from some get-together for struggling actors.

You knew nothing about their gig, of course. Like me, you thought you’d been reported missing to the police, not to two imposters. You thought the last-ditch loan for ten grand was for your new passport, your day-to-day needs in hiding while Melia set about getting me convicted, not pay dirt for a pair of out-of-work actors.

But, as I say, I think they got carried away; they kept adding their own lines. I can’t believe Melia briefed them about the claustrophobia – they must have googled my name and found the news reports. I was pretty unnerved at times, even knowing I’d done nothing, that there was no body for them to find – not yet. What if I’d been rattled enough to pull out? That would have been the last thing she wanted.

Or maybe she just knew she’d be able talk me back around, no matter how I reacted. The washed-up middle-aged man who’d fallen for her so predictably. (A blowjob on a cable car, did she tell you about that?) Her greatest challenge was probably hiding her contempt.

I’m really attracted to you, Jamie . . . Sometimes, often, I wonder where the three of us – the four of us – would be if she’d never said that. Those words that were not so much fateful as fatal.

*

As for the other passenger, the mystery witness, she didn’t exist. How twisted is that? There I was, agonizing over her identity, her potential to subvert our careful planning and sabotage my defence – even resurrecting my guilt about that woman on the Tube, who had probably cast me from her mind the moment she hit ‘Send’ on her last vindictive email – when all along the men pretending to be detectives simply made her up! For a while, I thought Melia must have written her into the script to keep me on my toes, but then I remembered her reaction when I brought it up (What other passenger?), that rare moment of disbalance, and I knew they’d been improvising.

No, that little sadistic touch was theirs, not hers.

They had a fine old time of it, Merchison and Parry.

46

Soon after

So, listen, Kit: I might be able to visit your grave myself – and sooner than I thought. I think I might have new grounds to appeal.

I know!

I’ve sent a message to my brief and hope to get him in for a meeting as soon as his schedule allows.

Let me tell you, visitors are like hens’ teeth here – if someone your age even knows what that means – or at least they are in my case. Dad and Debs visited at first, but when Dad passed away following a stroke, three months after my conviction, my sister as good as told me I was responsible for his death and said she couldn’t bring herself to see me again – not until ‘time heals’, anyway. I wasn’t permitted temporary release for his funeral because I’m Cat A, but Debs at least wrote to tell me it had gone as well as could be hoped and attached a graveside photo deemed by my overlords safe for me to view. Clare was there, of course, looking older, thinner, but that might have been the black clothing, an unforgiving colour for the middle-aged.

And so, unbelievably, was Melia. She wanted to pay her respects, apparently, after Clare had paid hers at a ‘moving’ memorial service for you. Women together, burying their men. ‘If anyone knows how we all feel, it’s her,’ Debs wrote. ‘She’s still grieving too.’

Seriously, Kit, is there no one who sees through this woman, besides you and me?

Oh, and Clare told Debs they played ‘She’s Not There’ by the Zombies at your service, the song we were listening to on the steps of Prospect Square that time. I didn’t know it had become a favourite. If they’d had any idea I was the one who introduced you to it, they wouldn’t have allowed it. It’s too late to say you’re sorry, remember?

Anyway, in recent months, I’ve had only one visitor. That’s right, out of all the Visitor Orders I’ve sent out, only one has been used. No, not by Clare, regrettably, but that was always going to be a long shot; not Steve or Gretchen, either, or any of my older friends, the ones I virtually ignored in that last year of liberty – they all think I’m a murderer and presumably couldn’t delete me from their contacts, their memories, fast enough.

No, it was my old mucker Regan. Oh, of course, you never met her, did you? I think you’d have found her a bit guileless for your tastes, but she and I always got on fine. Innocent times at the Comfort Zone, eh.

We sat in the visits hall on spongy blue seats, divided by a low table. The mood in the room was upbeat, with many of the men receiving visits from their wives or girlfriends, and supervised mostly by volunteers. She let me hug her and I smelled the outside world on her clothing, on her hair. The plastic coating of the hi-vis bib I was required to wear crackled between us.

‘This is so great!’ I beamed at her, stirred with sentiments I hadn’t felt in months.

‘Yes.’ Through the masterwork that was her makeup job, she looked uncertain and I tried to put her at her ease.

‘How’s the café?’

‘Oh, I left ages ago. I’m assistant manager in a branch of H&M in Victoria Station now.’

‘Where are you living these days?’

Her lengthy complaint about a studio in Hounslow partitioned to accommodate her and a friend, who was newly and lustfully coupled with a man prone to psychotic episodes, would have elicited more sympathy had I not been flat-sharing myself in a twelve-by-eight-foot cell. I wondered if the aromas compared. Everywhere you go here, including the visits hall, the bodily smells of fifteen hundred overheated, underemployed males are discernible through the disinfectant.

‘You got here okay?’

‘Fine, though there were these really scary dudes waiting at the gate. They offered me drugs, can you believe it?’

I gestured dismissively. ‘I’d be more surprised if you said there weren’t dealers at the gate. There are over fifty different gangs in this place, they all have mates meeting them when they get out and those mates aren’t likely to be astronauts.’

‘Oh, right.’

I saw I’d offended her; my social skills were not what they used to be. You forget that outside decent people go on living by the same discretionary codes they always did, the same regard for the feelings of others. ‘Thank you for coming today, Regan. I didn’t think you would. And for standing up for me in court. That meant a lot.’

‘I didn’t . . . I mean, you were so . . .’ She faltered, swallowing nervously. Her fingers tugged at the ends of her hair.