But there she was, with a whole inserted page to herself, full of scribbled-out addresses and phone numbers and email addresses, many with question marks or the words “not sure” written beside them. The most recent address was of the house in Maida Vale from which Julia had been evicted after refusing to leave (the owners she’d been house-sitting for were friends of my parents). That was a little over a decade ago, and it appeared my mother’s efforts to keep track of her former protégée had exhausted themselves after this.

We weren’t planning a big funeral, just family and close friends. Julia, who at one time would have probably been considered both, no longer fell into either category. And yet I found myself trying all the phone numbers on her page. I was aware of an element of idle curiosity in this. The thought of seeing her in person, or at least of talking to her, after all that had gone on with Marco, intrigued me. But I felt a little furtive as I dialed the numbers. I don’t like to think of myself as a busybody, though that in itself doesn’t seem enough to account for this dim sense of wrongdoing. Perhaps I was aware of the dangers of becoming implicated—of shifting from neutral observer of this drama into something more, shall we say, participatory. At any rate I was as much relieved as disappointed, when none of the phone numbers or email addresses worked. No doubt I could have got hold of Julia if I’d really wanted to, but I decided to take these failures as a sign that I should let the matter drop. I hadn’t forgotten her voice on Marco’s answering machine, and I could certainly see the benefits of not confronting its owner.

As for the other players in Marco’s drama, his parents had heard the news of my mother’s death through Marco and had sent a message asking to be informed about the funeral arrangements. Unlike Julia, they’d never been more than dinner party acquaintances of my parents, but nor had they ever entirely disappeared from my parents’ lives, and after some hesitation I decided I wouldn’t be stretching a point, or even indulging inappropriately in personal curiosity, by inviting them to the service and the reception afterward. Renata Shenker presented no such difficulties: she was an old and much-loved family friend, and was one of the first people I called.