‘Thanks, but shh, Matt’s home, asleep on the sofa,’ I said as I ushered them through the hall and into the kitchen diner, where I shut the door after them. They made an odd pair. Debs, a curvaceous bohemian, forty-seven years old, with a mop of dark hair piled on top of her head and kept in place with a chopstick, was wearing a kingfisher blue silk top, green harem trousers and a big emerald amulet fit for an Egyptian high priestess. Although British born and bred, with her olive skin and brown eyes she looked Spanish, a throwback to her Andalusian great-grandmother, she’d told us. Next to her, Lorna was small and slim, in her fifties, and was in jeans and a blue shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, her silver-white hair cut neatly to her shoulders. I was the oldest of the three of us, but often felt like the youngest, a twenty year old trapped in an old body. Matt called my friends the S and S, the silly and the sensible, Debs being the first, Lorna the latter; he said that each of them represented a different side of my nature. ‘There’s more to me than that,’ I’d told him. ‘I have many sides – I’m multifaceted, like a diamond.’ He’d laughed. Cheek.

‘Matt? What’s going on?’ asked Debs, and was about to go barging in to see him but I pulled her back.

‘I don’t know, but he’s clearly had a skinful. Best leave him for now.’

‘Not like him,’ said Lorna as she settled on a stool at the island.

‘Why don’t you wake him?’ asked Debs. ‘Find out?’

‘I thought I’d let him sleep whatever it is off first.’

‘Wise,’ said Lorna and stood up. ‘Should we go?’

‘I … maybe. In case … I don’t know, something’s clearly happened and, until I know what, I don’t … Probably best you’re not here to see him in whatever state he wakes up in.’

‘No clues at all?’ asked Debs.

‘No, apart from a dictionary on the table. He must have been working on something.’ He always had his nose in a book, researching something or other for his job as a TV programme developer.

Lorna handed me a pot; in it was a wild geranium, its white flowers tinged with the faintest pink blush. ‘It’s a Kashmir White. If you like it, we can get more,’ she said as she headed for the front door, where she pulled out a leaflet and handed it to me. ‘And this lists the gardening classes on locally. We could go together, but we can talk about that another time. Come on, Debs. Call us if you need.’

‘Call us anyway,’ said Debs.