Jenny had found the police difficult to read. When she ran through the doors and began panting her story to the man on the desk, she’d seen his expression move from flat boredom, through sudden sharp interest, to something else. Something that might be dark amusement, tinged with disbelief, and she’d said: ‘I know it all sounds insane, I know that, but please, it’s true!’ and watched his expression crawl back behind the wall of professional indulgence. She had no idea if he believed her or not. She just had to hope he did.

In the safety of an interview room, she told another officer the whole story. David was violent, obsessive. He’d been stalking her – her friend had the proof, but now her friend was dead. ‘I should have come to you then, I know I should, but I thought that if I talked to David I could get him to admit things?’

‘And you saw these items – the hat, the knife – yourself did you?’

‘No,’ Jenny admitted. ‘Freddie took some photos of them on his phone and showed them to me. They’ll still be on his phone? All you have to do is look on his phone and—’

‘We haven’t recovered Mr Lees-Hill’s phone yet.’ The officer leaned towards her tiredly. ‘So you say you only saw… photographs of photographs of you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not the original photographs?’

‘No, but—’

‘And what else? A hat?’

She nodded. ‘A red Nike baseball cap. It had bloodstains on it. Marc wore it all the time.’

The officer nodded slowly. ‘A lot of red baseball caps around.’

Jenny’s face hardened. ‘It was his hat. I know it was his hat.’

‘How could you tell it was bloodstained from only seeing a photograph? Blood on red—’

Jenny clenched her fists, tried to keep her voice calm. ‘You don’t believe me.’

The officer smiled patronisingly. ‘I’m not saying that, what I am saying is that we’d need more to—’

‘Look, he’s sick. David. He has mental problems; he’s been hospitalised.’ She let herself cry then, and her eyes wide, pleading, met those of the officer. ‘Look at my face! Look at what he did to me!’ She watched the policeman’s face as he looked at her eye. Maybe it wasn’t bruised enough? She hadn’t looked at it since… ‘He has a history of violence, look him up! He’s been in psychiatric hospitals! He killed my friend, I know he did! I know it was David!’ Still that hooded scepticism. Jenny felt tears of rage. One hand clenched the other, hard until her knuckles turned white. ‘Look, he’s in the hospital with his mother, right now. There’s no way he’d leave her there, even to find me. If you go now, there’s a chance you could get him.’

The officer didn’t reply, but looked heavily at her. His expression was smooth, unreadable, and it made her nervous. Eventually, he said that he had to have a word with his colleague, led Jenny back to the reception, and placed her on the hard bench below the noticeboard. He disappeared into the back office behind the reception desk.

She waited for ten long minutes and, from behind the frosted glass, she heard dull mutterings and one sharp laugh. She waited for five more minutes, feeling anger and fear build… were they laughing about her? No, they weren’t. Of course they weren’t. They were though… she could feel it. She wasn’t believed. She wasn’t bruised enough to believe. Her silenced phone buzzed with calls from David. How long did she have? How long did she have before he found her? She turned off her phone and went to the toilet, gritted her teeth, and hit herself in the eye a few more times. Then she smoothed her hair, dabbed her eyes, and walked back to the reception area, ripped down a ‘Hang Up on Fraudsters!’ poster and wrote David’s address on the back of it, along with a tearful note:

She left it on the reception desk, and walked out of the building, and took a cab to Cheryl’s, gave her the notes, then took another cab to the station. She had a long journey ahead of her. It would take two trains and a bus to get where she needed to go.

On the first train, she tried to write. On the second she tried to read, but on the final few miles, shaking on the back seat of the clattering bus, gave herself over to silent thought, as her present looped neatly into the past, pulling her into the heart of Scarborough.

The Windsor Castle was under new ownership, and she doubted if the slightly pitiful hipster couple that ran it now had ever heard of the names Granville, Kathleen or Sal. The shabby fleur-de-lis carpet on the stairs had been taken up; the boards still squeaked. The foyer had been jazzed up with a few forlorn-looking taxidermied animals, mismatched chairs and kitschy mirrors. The hipster decor spread over the whole place, but stopped dead at the boundary of the bar area. Here, it was like stepping back in time. The same creaky stools clustered around the same walnut curve of the bar. Jenny almost expected to see an eight-year-old version of herself, spinning on her stool, kicking the shabby veneer with scuffed shoes, eating crisps, while Sal and Kathleen drank, laughed, sang along to Dusty Springfield on the jukebox, loud enough for Granville to tell them to ‘Keep it down – sounds like two cats in a blender!’ and both women would stop, mock offended, then carry on, louder than before.

On the cusp of the bar, adult Jenny closed her eyes, smiled, almost hearing the rough affection in Granville’s voice, the shy pride. Because they didn’t sound like cats in a blender at all – they both had lovely, strong, smoky voices. Beautiful voices.

Jenny hadn’t expected to feel… anything really. She’d come up here because it was far away, and she’d checked into The Windsor Castle because it was familiar, that was all. She hadn’t expected it to be this affecting. She hadn’t… wow. She shook her head in a dazed sort of way. The man behind the bar asked if she was OK.

‘Yes. Just… I used to come here when I was little, that’s all.’

‘Has it changed much?’

‘This bit hasn’t.’

The barman nodded. ‘I think they thought it was cheesy enough in here as it was. They didn’t need to do anything to it.’ He smiled ironically. ‘London. Rob and Jemma? The owners? London.’ He nodded again with grim satisfaction. ‘Thought they could bring a little bit of Shoreditch to Scarborough.’

‘Is it not doing well then?’

The man smiled again. ‘Well, put it this way – twelve rooms, twelve vacancies. Eleven now that you’re here. What can I get you?’

‘Gin and tonic.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘We’ve got this elderflower infused one, and some sloe gin somewhere, and—’

‘Have you got any just normal gin? Gordon’s or something?’ She sat on a bar stool gingerly. ‘And not served up in a test tube or something?’

He winked, dug out a bottle of something called Juniper Flavoured Spirit. ‘This is the most bog-standard they’ve got.’ He poured it into a normal, un-ironic glass, while the jukebox played the unrepentantly uncool Elton John.

‘Hope you don’t mind me asking.’ He was awkward. She knew what was coming. ‘Your eye?’

She touched it with a gentle finger, as if she’d forgotten what it looked like. ‘Oh God, is it awful?’

‘It’s… colourful.’

‘Let’s just say I… got on the wrong side of someone.’ She allowed a brave, sad smile to spread.

The barman shifted uncomfortably. ‘None of my business but, boyfriend?’

Jenny nodded, looked down at the bar, let tears thicken her voice. ‘I ran away.’ Elton John’s inane lyrics were the only thing breaking the silence. She could almost feel the barman’s discomfort. She waited another minute or so before speaking again. ‘Bad man.’

‘You’ve… told the police then?’

She nodded. ‘And came straight here.’ She took a sip of her gin. ‘Sorry. Don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. It’s not a very happy topic of conversation, is it?’

‘Don’t worry about that, love,’ the barman said stoutly. ‘He sounds like a proper bastard. Sounds like you’re well out of it.’

She nodded, smiled gratefully. ‘Got to keep yourself safe, haven’t you?’

‘Yup. Look after number one.’

She finished her drink. ‘Listen, just in case someone… calls for me, comes round looking for me, please…?’

‘You’re safe here, love,’ he told her. ‘I’ll let Rob and Jemma know to look out for someone too, OK?’

She smiled gratefully at him. Her bad eye was almost closed.