The door opens and two more policemen enter. They look at Owen strangely as they walk in and Owen feels his stomach curl at the edges. He knows what that look means.

They take DI Currie out of the room for a few minutes; then she returns alone. She spreads some new paperwork on the table in front of her, clears her throat, says something into DI Henry’s ear, stares straight at Owen and says, ‘Well. Mr Pick. I think …’ She moves the paperwork around again. She’s clearly working out her next move, wants to make sure she pitches it just right. ‘I think, maybe, we need to back up a little here. I think we need to discuss, maybe, your activities over the past few weeks – since, in fact, the date of your suspension from Ealing College. Would you say, Mr Pick, that that experience has changed you at all? Made you view life differently?’

Barry leans forward, runs a finger down his exquisite silk tie and says, ‘Don’t answer that, Owen. It’s a ridiculous question.’

Owen closes his mouth.

DI Currie inhales and starts again. ‘Mr Pick, we have been through the browsing history of your laptop. We’ve found some quite disturbing entries in a number of what I believe are known as incel forums. Mr Blair, do you know what an incel forum is?’

‘Indeed I do,’ says Barry, taking Owen somewhat by surprise. Barry looks as though he came straight from 1960; Owen cannot imagine him owning a computer, let alone knowing what an incel forum is.

‘You have been frequenting these forums quite a lot lately, Mr Pick, would you say?’

He shrugs and says, ‘No. Not really.’

‘Well, I can tell you exactly how much time you’ve spent frequenting these forums, Mr Pick, because we have the data right here. Since Thursday January the seventeenth, the day you were suspended from your job at Ealing College, you have spent roughly four hours a day on these forums.’

‘Owen, you still don’t need to say anything. This is all complete nonsense.’

‘Owen, you’ve said some pretty dreadful things on these forums. You’ve joined in discussions on how to rape women, which sort of women deserve to be raped, and why. And you’ve referred to women in such derogatory terms that I can barely bring myself to repeat the terminology. You sit here, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, with your big, sad eyes, while thinking these things, expressing these vile, vile opinions about women.’

Her voice is raised, her eyes flash. For the first time since Owen first set eyes on Angela Currie, she is showing some genuine personality. She turns the papers around so he can see the words he typed in a frenzy of euphoria at meeting people he could relate to.

The words swim in front of his eyes.

… Slag … Mouth …

… Fist …

… Whore … Hard …Face …

… Slut …

… Bitch … Bleed … Hole …

He closes his eyes.

He didn’t mean any of those words.

He’d just been joining in. The new boy. Getting carried away.

‘Can you confirm that these were written by you?’

He looks at Barry.

Barry just blinks at him. He is disgusted.

Owen nods his head.

‘Please affirm verbally, Mr Pick.’

‘Yes. I wrote these words. But I didn’t mean them.’

‘You didn’t mean them?’

‘No. Not really. I mean, I am, I was cross about a lot of things. I was cross about being reported for things I hadn’t done at work …’

‘Hadn’t done?’

‘Hadn’t done in the way those girls said I’d done them.’

‘You mean they misread your intentions?’

‘Yes. No. Yes. I don’t have the slightest interest in teenage girls. Not in that way. They look like children to me. So whatever it was they thought I’d done, it had to have been done entirely innocently, unintentionally.’

DI Currie nods. ‘So you were cross about that, and you went to these places on the internet’ – she stabs a piece of paper with her fingertip – ‘and you said disgusting, violent things about women, because you were angry?’

Owen nods. ‘Yes. That’s right. But I didn’t mean any of it.’

‘Just like you didn’t mean to flick sweat on those girls or ask them if they liked girls or boys?’

‘What? I didn’t say that …’

‘They say you did, Mr Pick. Nancy Wade says you made her fear for her life while she walked alone in the dark. Your neighbours identified you as a potential sex threat when their daughter’s friend said she’d been accosted close to their home last month and a police officer was sent to ask you about that. You have spent dozens of hours in chat rooms and on forums discussing the best way to rape women and we have found traces of Saffyre Maddox’s blood on the wall and in the grass beneath your bedroom window, Saffyre Maddox’s phone case also beneath your bedroom window, and now, Mr Pick, we have been told of the existence of a large amount of the prohibited drug, Rohypnol, in one of your bedroom drawers – Rohypnol being, as I’m sure we’re all aware, a very well-known example of what is known as a date-rape drug.

‘The time is currently twelve-oh-three a.m., the day is Saturday the twenty-third of February. Owen Michael Pick, I am placing you under arrest for the abduction of Saffyre Maddox. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Do you understand?’

Owen looks at Barry as if there is something he should be saying or doing that could make this go away.

But Barry just closes his eyes and nods.

37

SAFFYRE

A few days before New Year’s Eve, I found Aaron standing at the door of our flat looking edgy and bouncy. I’d just got out of the lift. I said, ‘What’s up with you?’

‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’

I smiled suspiciously at him. ‘Oh yeah?’

‘Take your coat off,’ he said. He took it from me as I slipped my arms out of the sleeves and hung it up for me. ‘Come. But be quiet. OK? Take your shoes off.’

I kicked off my trainers and looked at him questioningly.

Then I followed him into the living room. He led me towards the Christmas tree and said, ‘Oh look! There’s another present under the tree! Santa must have come back because you have been such a good girl!’

I frowned at him and then knelt down next to the parcel. It was more of a box than a parcel, a shiny red box with a lid and a golden bow.

‘You’d better open it, don’t you think?’

I slowly pulled the lid up. I looked in the box. And then I gasped. My hands went straight to my mouth. I looked at Aaron and I said, ‘No!’

‘Actually, yes.’ He smiled hard.

Inside the box was a tiny cream kitten. It was like the sort of kitten you see on Instagram: big blue eyes, so much fluff. It opened its mouth like a lion about to roar, and made a tiny, pathetic mewling sound. I laughed and put my hands into the box to scoop it out. It barely weighed anything; it was all fluff and no physical mass, just a tiny breath of a thing. ‘Is it ours?’ I asked Aaron.

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s yours. He’s your cat.’

I made some weird noise, like a squeal mixed with a groan. All my life, all my life I’d been asking for a pet and all my life I’d been told no, that it was too much work, we didn’t have enough space, that Granddad had allergies, too expensive, too much. And I’d finally given up asking a couple of years back and now here was my pet. Here he was. In my hands. I kissed his head and said, ‘For real?’

And Aaron said, ‘Yes. For real.’

‘Oh my God. Oh my actual God. I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it.’

I put the kitten down on the floor and let him explore. He stood on his back legs and pawed at a low-hanging bauble. Aaron and I looked at each other and laughed.

He said, ‘What are you going to call him?’

‘Gosh, I don’t know. What do you think?’

‘I dunno. I mean, the blue eyes – Frank Sinatra?’

‘Who?’

‘Frank Sinatra. He’s a singer from the old days. Called ’Ol Blue Eyes. Because of his blue eyes. How do you not know this?’

‘Why should I know this? I’m young. I’m not old like you.’

‘But Frank would be a cool name for him, don’t you think?’

I picked up the kitten and looked at his big blue eyes. He did the tiny noise thing again. I thought, No, he doesn’t look like a Frank. He looks like an angel. I said, ‘Angelo. I’m going to call him Angelo.’