She was sitting on the edge of her bed, gathering herself, when she heard the screaming begin. All morning, there had been noise from the park. The neighbours gathering for the bank-holiday barbecue. There were bags of sausages in her fridge, a coleslaw prepared in a china bowl – her contributions, which would remain untouched. Everything had changed last night, once Charlotte had discovered them together. But the screams that rose from the park were different from the shouts and tantrums of children. Amidst the noise, there was the shrill cry of an adult voice, panic within it. And then a strange hush. It drew Hilary to her feet, and when she looked out of her window, she saw some of her neighbours, Martin Cooper and Will Bolton with a couple of others, striding across and up the steps to Number 14. Her heart had clenched, her thoughts confused. The battering on the door, an urgency within it, reached her all the way from across the street, and then she saw Anton emerging from down below, coming up the outdoor steps from the basement flat, his movements slow and heavy, as if he’d just been dragged from sleep.

The men all disappeared into the house, and there was a moment of calm, the front door left open, the absence of movement, and then Will Bolton came rushing out and down the steps, calling instructions to his wife, who was crossing towards him now, a high note of panic in his voice. Hilary watched him say something to her, saw the woman raise both hands to her mouth. Then her eyes went back to the front door where another neighbour emerged – Martin Cooper – and Hilary watched him gripping the railings that lined the steps, taking deep gulps of air, like he’d just surfaced from underwater. She watched as he bent over suddenly and threw up, right there on the steps. Only then did she move.

‘Something’s going on,’ she’d said to Greg, as he came in from the garden and met her at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

Without waiting for him, she’d hurried outside and run across the street to where a small crowd had gathered.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ she asked, and Maria Bolton had turned to her, eyes round in her small pale face, saying: ‘Oh, Hilary, you won’t believe it. Charlotte’s dead.’

The word hit her. That was what it felt like – as if the word itself were a cool hard pellet slapping against the centre of her forehead. She didn’t yet fully understand.

‘But how?’ she asked, her thoughts tending automatically to some sort of accident. Memories of Charlotte drunk came sliding up, nursing to life a suspicion of an intoxicated fall, the slam of her head against a sharp corner, a hard surface, but when Maria said, ‘She’s been murdered,’ the street seemed to tilt, the row of houses all falling away.