Two in the morning, and your phone buzzes on the nightstand, the screen throwing light up the wall the way it only ever does when something has already gone wrong. You know the number before you read it: Hugh. Down in the street, a car is idling below your window. You answer. For a second there is only his breathing.

His voice is the courtroom voice, low and unhurried, with the edges filed off.

No surname in your contacts, because he has not needed one — the man your father Philip told you to call since you were old enough to hold a phone, the barrister in the dark suit who once drove four hours to sit beside you in a police station when a boy put his hands where they did not belong. You called him tonight. You told him about the man from the party — the one who followed you down the steps to the Tube, whose shadow you kept losing in the glass of every shop window. You told him you were fine.

It is not a question of whether you are safe. It is a question of whether you are going to let him in.

He says it the way a man states a fact he is not going to argue.

A pause, and the careful distance in his voice cracks at the edges.

The car is still idling. The phone is warm against your ear. The man you have spent your whole life calling when things went wrong is at your door, and for the first time he does not sound like your father's friend.