When my father came and found me a few minutes later, I was still sitting there, staring blankly at the wall. He bounded up, looking jaunty and happy.

‘All right, darling? Let’s go.’ He rubbed his hands together. I turned my head and looked at him blankly. ‘Luce?’ he said as I got to my feet. ‘What’s wrong? You’re as white as a sheet.’

‘Someone’s been charged with Michael’s murder,’ I told him. But my voice sounded odd. Distant. ‘It’s just been on the news.’

‘Oh!’ He looked astonished. Then his face cleared. ‘But that’s marvellous, darling. I mean – clears it all up.’

‘He’s seventeen,’ I told him. There appeared to be no saliva in my mouth.

‘Right.’

‘There was a picture. He looked … like a child. Like Ned did, at that age.’

‘OK, well—’

‘He’s probably – you know – a petty thief. A local lad. Chancing his arm. Nicking laptops, that kind of thing. Not a murderer.’

My father shrugged. ‘Well, unintended consequences and all that.’ He looked at me carefully, as if searching behind my eyes. ‘Come on, love,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s go to the car.’

We began to walk out. I kept my head bowed. I could sense he was recovering his buoyancy beside me, fairly bounding along by the time we got to the front doors. Not particularly fussed that a young lad had been arrested for Michael’s death, still very much with his dear wife in the ward down the corridor. And d’you know, he didn’t really feel they were doing enough in their declining years. He felt that the moment had to be seized. That now that his ulcers were under control, and her eyes and everything else – waterworks and what have you – they might go on a cruise. But I wasn’t really listening, I was wondering how Andrew Parker had grown up. Fatherless? Possibly. Unemployed, almost certainly. Did he even have a home? Was he on the streets? Seventeen … I felt a bit sick. I let us into the car and let Dad ramble on as we drove away.

He was telling me about a trip the Frobishers had taken. Just around the Balearic Islands, so not far, but hot and sunny and—‘Don’t you think it’s odd that they didn’t come and tell me?’ I said suddenly, cutting into his chatter.

‘Who?’

‘The police.’

He looked surprised. ‘Well no, love. They’re just concluding their inquiry.’

‘But Michael was my husband. And I was questioned.’

‘Well yes, of course you were, you were there, in the house. But they will have questioned lots of people. They don’t have to come and tell you how they’re getting on.’

‘Don’t they?’