Lindsay tried out various responses in her head. “When?” “Why?” “I never liked her anyway.” “Is there . . . someone else?” She settled for, “Oh, Ian. Poor you. What happened?” It seemed to combine solicitude with support. Please God, he wouldn’t feel like telling her.

At first, it seemed as if Lindsay’s prayer had been answered. Ian said nothing, simply concentrating on the road and the car in front. They started moving again, and, miraculously, whatever had been clogging the traffic vanished. Within minutes, the engine was in third gear, the tower was growing taller and Ian had become talkative. “You know how you think you know someone? You feel comfortable with them? You could see yourself spending the rest of your life with them? Well, that’s how it was with me and Laura,” he said.

And me and Frances, Lindsay echoed mentally. “You seemed to get on so well together,” she said.

Ian gave a hollow laugh. “Just shows how blind you can be, doesn’t it? What a mug.” He took a deep breath, then broke into a fit of coughing. As he recovered, his hand went out automatically to the glove box. He opened it and took out a blue plastic tube with an angled end which he put in his mouth. Lindsay tried not to look as if she was paying attention as he used the inhaler and chucked it back in the glove box.

“Is my cigarette bothering you?” she asked.

Ian shook his head, holding his breath. He let the air out in a controlled gasp. “Cigarette smoke doesn’t set my asthma off. Now, if you were wearing Rive Gauche or you had a dog at home, I’d have to strap you to the roof-rack. Poor Laura could never treat herself to a new perfume without consulting me first. Oh well, that’s one thing she won’t have to worry about any more.”

The bitterness in his tone shocked Lindsay. It seemed so alien from Ian, that most gentle of men. It was hard to square with the devoted adoration he’d always displayed when he’d talked about Laura in the past. He was one of those men who carry photographs of their lovers and find the most tenuous excuses to pull them out of their wallets and display them. Long before she’d ever met Laura in the flesh, Lindsay had seen Laura in Greece, Laura in Scotland, Laura on horseback, Laura in a sailing dinghy, Laura in evening dress and Laura asleep.

“When did all this happen? You haven’t mentioned it at work,” Lindsay said.

“I could do without the snide jokes. Worse than that, the pity,” Ian said. He wasn’t misjudging their colleagues, Lindsay thought sadly. “I threw her out three weeks ago last Saturday,” he added.