She continues to regard me and I realise it’s an odd question, but I’m interested in her answer. I lean forward in my chair, ignoring the voice telling me I shouldn’t use my clients for my own purposes.

‘I don’t …’ She shakes her head and in that moment looks so confused that I lay my palm flat on the table between us and tell her it doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to catch her out.

‘There’s no right or wrong answer,’ I say, though my minor slip means I need to backtrack and make her feel comfortable again.

I move the conversation on, but at the end of our session, once her husband has left the room, she pauses and says, ‘I think I always would have asked him.’

She looks so sad and I touch her arm lightly. ‘I think any of us would do the same,’ I assure her. ‘Despite the outcome, we’d always beg for honesty.’

Because isn’t the torment of wondering worse than the truth? I have gone back and forth in my head playing out too many scenarios, trying to bury my own questions that would have burnt through my skull if I’d let them, and now I fear they will. In my own training, I learnt that we are better equipped when we know what we’re up against.

I follow them out, and once they’ve disappeared at the end of the road I hold my face up to the grey sky, my hand circling my wrist where my own friendship bracelet once was.

There were secrets that summer. We all had them, though I don’t understand how we got to that point where it all went so terribly wrong. And the more I try to separate everything, the more it blends together until it becomes one large tangled mess, leaving me thinking if I can pick apart one piece the rest might unravel.

The body; our departure; Jill’s silence – what if it’s all linked somehow? The thought tears through me as the sky closes in and I can’t bear the foreboding sense that it could be. All I know is that I have to find out and I can’t do that here.

I go back into reception and wait for Tanya to finish a call. When she hangs up I tell her I’m rearranging my clients for the next few days. ‘I don’t have many and I can fit them in next week,’ I say.

She eyes me over the rim of her glasses.

‘I can’t not go,’ I tell her, almost breathless at my decision.

Chapter Six