I hadn’t yet been inside Jai’s new house, even though it was round the corner from mine, but he seemed obsessed with his damp basement. Maybe he’d been droning on to Suki about pumps and that was part of her problem.

We followed a narrow lane through gates into a concrete yard. A slab-sided grey building sat in front of us, sanitised and anonymous, giving away nothing about what went on inside.

‘Are you going to be okay with this?’ Jai said.

My head filled with images from abattoir videos posted by animal rights groups and shared by my friends on Facebook, just to improve my mental well-being and sleeping patterns. I didn’t need to see the real thing, especially in my current state of mind. Or hear it. This abattoir did pigs. Pigs squealed.

‘I’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘I’m more worried about the missing girl.’ But it struck me like an electric shock that I wasn’t that worried about the girl – at least not to my usual PhD-level. Was I so worn down from watching Gran die that I’d lost some vital part of myself? It scared the hell out of me. If I didn’t care about my job to the point of virtual mania, who even was I?

‘You do know she’s famous because she barbecues burgers in a bikini?’ Jai said. ‘A phrase I wouldn’t advise saying when drunk.’

‘Yeah. She simultaneously dumps on feminism and animal rights in an impressive double whammy.’ I could keep the banter going while I had my mini existential crisis, but our camaraderie felt forced. I’d thought I was doing the right thing by being super-nice about his girlfriend, thus removing any question of whether I liked him a little too much for a colleague, but I’d obviously got it all wrong.

We pulled up in the yard and heaved ourselves out of the car. The sun sliced through the hot air, making the car windows so shiny it hurt to look at them. A few uniforms were buzzing around. We had a lot of missing person calls, but this one had triggered a red-button-push.

The door to the abattoir building swung open and a skinny blonde woman came out at a gallop. ‘Goodness, it’s warm. I hope we’re not wasting your time. I’m not wanting to make a fuss, but I thought we should call just in case …’

‘Shall we pop inside a minute?’ I said. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Meg Dalton and this is Detective Sergeant Jai Sanghera. What’s your name?’

‘Anna Finchley. I own the abattoir.’

I wasn’t sure if it was subconscious sexism or ageism, but I was surprised at that revelation. There was a touch of the gangly teenager or new-born foal about her, although she must have been in her thirties. She didn’t look like an abattoir-owner.