Two police officers sitting in a parked patrol car saw her as she approached Gray’s Inn Road. They looked at her with a bored kind of concern. This wasn’t necessarily a safe area for a woman to walk alone at night. They couldn’t quite make her out. Not a prostitute. She wasn’t particularly young, mid-thirties maybe. Long dark hair. Medium height. Her long coat hid her figure. She didn’t look like someone on her way back from a party.

‘Didn’t fancy spending the whole night with him,’ said one.

The other grinned. ‘I wouldn’t kick her out of bed on a night like this,’ he said. He wound down the window as she approached. ‘Everything all right, miss?’ he asked, as she passed.

She just pushed her hands tightly into the pockets of her coat and walked on without giving any sign that she had heard.

‘Charming,’ said one of the officers, and returned to filling out the incident report on something that really hadn’t been much of an incident at all.

As Frieda walked on, she heard the words of her mother in her ear. It wouldn’t have hurt to say hello, would it? Well, what did she know? That was one of the reasons why she did these walks. So that she didn’t have to talk, didn’t have to be on show, be looked at and appraised. It was a time for thinking, or not thinking. Just walking and walking during those nights when sleep wouldn’t come and when she could get the mess out of her head. Sleep was meant to do that, but it didn’t do it for her even when it came in little snatches. She crossed Gray’s Inn Road – more buses and taxis – and walked down an alley, so small that it was like it had been forgotten about.

As she turned into King’s Cross Road, she saw that she was approaching two teenage boys. They were dressed in hoodies and baggy jeans. One of them said something to her that she couldn’t properly make out. She stared at him and he looked away.