Mr Wright, the CPS lawyer who is taking my statement, sits opposite me. I think he’s in his late thirties but maybe he is younger and his face has just been exposed to too many stories like mine. His expression is alert and he leans a fraction towards me, encouraging confidences. A good listener, I think, but what type of man?

‘If it’s OK with you,’ he says, ‘I’d like you to tell me everything, from the beginning, and let me sort out later what is relevant.’

I nod. ‘I’m not absolutely sure what the beginning is.’

‘Maybe when you first realised something was wrong?’

I notice he’s wearing a nice Italian linen shirt and an ugly printed polyester tie – the same person couldn’t have chosen both. One of them must have been a present. If the tie was a present he must be a nice man to wear it. I’m not sure if I’ve told you this, but my mind has a new habit of doodling when it doesn’t want to think about the matter in hand.

I look up at him and meet his eye.

‘It was the phone call from my mother saying she’d gone missing.’

When Mum phoned we were hosting a Sunday lunch party. The food, catered by our local deli, was very New York – stylish and impersonal; same said for our apartment, our furniture and our relationship – nothing home-made. The Big Apple with no core. You are startled by volte-face I know, but our conversation about my life in New York can wait.

We’d got back that morning from a ‘snowy romantic break’ in a Maine cabin, where we’d been celebrating my promotion to Account Director. Todd was enjoying regaling the lunch party with our big mistake:

‘It’s not as though we expected a Jacuzzi, but a hot shower wouldn’t hurt, and a landline would be helpful. It wasn’t even as if we could use our mobiles, our provider doesn’t have a mast out there.’