Ellie Goulding's new album opens with the sound of a crowd going wild, recorded at a festival date on the star's 2016/17 Delirium tour. It might have been Glastonbury, it might have been Rock In Rio, but the location isn't important. Wherever she was, Goulding was drained and tired and unhappy. "I'd just become a robot that was able to walk on stage and perform energetically and wildly," she says. "But actually I was just exhausted, and I don't remember any of it. I wasn't really able to enjoy anything properly."

The last day of January 2019 was sunny, yet bitterly cold in Romford, east London. Shoppers scurrying from retailer to retailer wrapped themselves in winter coats, scarves and hats. The temperature never rose above three degrees Celsius. For police officers positioned next to an inconspicuous blue van, just metres from Romford's Overground station, one man stood out among the thin winter crowds. The man, wearing a beige jacket and blue cap, had pulled his jacket over his face as he moved in the direction of the police officers.