I looked at him with some surprise. His dark brown eyes were kind. I nodded mutely. Then I turned and moved on, down the steps.

20

I made my way down the street, around the corner, and then down the road parallel to mine. It was a long street, like mine, so it took a few minutes, but when I gauged I was roughly in position, I looked up. The next-door neighbours in my own road, the Crosbys, were having a lot of work done, their scaffolding sticking up into the sky, a blue tarpaulin flapping in the wind. It wasn’t hard to work out the house I wanted. I paused before the black and white chequered pathway with its wrought-iron gate, and looked up at the white front door at the top of the steps. Number forty-two. Through the neat front garden full of late spring bulbs and up the stone steps I went, subconsciously noticing the tasteful urns of white lobelia by the door. There didn’t appear to be a doorbell, so I lifted the heavy brass lion’s head knocker … and then put it down again, softly.

What exactly was I going to say? What, if anything, did you see on that particular night, the night of the twenty-fourth of March, at about one in the morning? Naturally I’d say that. But if I was to be the grieving widow, overcome with frustration at police ineptitude and conducting her own enquiries, I had to take a moment to get into the part. I also had to be a wee bit careful here. Because if, in the fullness of time, I had literally no other option than to tell the truth and then use mental cruelty and coercion as a defence, I couldn’t be too extravagantly grief-stricken. It might not go down well later in court. So it might be best to be merely interested for now. Pragmatic. Wondering why on earth I hadn’t called and asked before.

I gazed up. The house was taller than mine: more imposing. I made myself knock and waited. Oh, thank the Lord, no one at home. I was off the hook. I turned, relieved. But then, just as I was going back down the steps, the door opened. I turned back. A young girl of about eighteen, wearing tiny denim shorts and an even tinier black top, peered at me through a flop of white-blonde hair. Fulham seemed to be littered with platinum blondes.

‘Oh hi,’ I smiled up. ‘Um, are your parents in?’

‘No, ’fraid not,’ she muttered. A more sulky blonde than the one I’d just met in my own house. She’d deigned to take the earpiece from her ear but was clearly annoyed at being dragged from a screen, although she clutched another, smaller one in her hand.

‘Any idea when they’ll be back?’

She shrugged. ‘Dunno. Mum’s out. Who are you?’