‘My friend has been round. The neighbour wasn’t in, but it turns out she’s a friend of the dead husband. My friend is now in terrible trouble.’

My living hell, which had been slumbering quietly at low-level anxiety, came roaring back to life like Caliban from his cave. I felt sick: nothing placatory there. I messaged back:

‘That is so kind of you would love to meet. Is tomorrow any good?’

I needed to do this now. Immediately. I stayed still on the landing, waiting. It seemed to me I wouldn’t move from this spot until I knew. The text had been sent an hour ago and I hoped he hadn’t gone to bed. It was only ten o’clock, though. Dots began to dance on my screen. He was back within seconds.

‘Tomorrow is fine. I’m teaching but could meet you close by. There’s a Pret in Melrose Street. One o’clock?’

I frantically messaged back.

‘Perfect. Thank you.’

I stared out of the landing window at the almost full moon, obscured by a thin veil of cloud in the night sky. It wasn’t perfect. Of course it wasn’t. My wording was as obfuscated as the moon at which I gazed. Nothing could be perfect any more. I’d effectively killed my husband. I was under no illusion about that. But a kind man was going to advise and help me, which was something. Just as another kind man had cooked me supper tonight. Strange how life can turn, like that, on a sixpence. One moment you’re perfectly fine, or you’ve allowed yourself to think you are because the alternative – walking around in a state of high alert and high anxiety at all times – is unsustainable; and the next, you’re not. You’re meeting a man in a sandwich bar in London who, given your predicament, will spell out the consequences of your actions to you. Your actions taken in an extremely short space of time but as a result of years of provocation.

In a remarkably cool manner for one for whom the bell was so imminently to toll, I went on up the stairs to bed.

I managed to maintain the cool, collected manner to my parents the following morning. They hardly batted an eyelid when I said I was going to London to look at some furniture for the cottage. OKA, in the Fulham Road, I told them, was my focus. In fact they looked rather pleased that I was so enthused. It was also convenient, they told me, because they were lunching with the Frobishers, and Camilla, their daughter, was picking them up.

‘And she’s dropping us back,’ Dad told me. ‘And worry not, Camilla is more scary than my old company commander. She’ll have us back here at three o’clock on the dot, and no more than barley water will have passed our lips.’

‘More’s the pity,’ grumbled Mum.