‘That’s right,’ says Sharon. ‘We received instructions to hold on to the fob and to pass it on to you. This was done through a previous letting assistant who’s now left the company. She was a bit of an airhead, to be honest, forgot to take people’s numbers if they called with an enquiry, double-booked viewings. It seems she’d done it again with the Larkfields notes.’

‘You say you were given instructions,’ I say. ‘Was it Sean?’

‘I actually don’t know, Mrs Allan,’ she says, her voice flat. ‘As I said, it was my previous colleague who dealt with it all but reading between the lines it looks as though the house was emptied by a third party after the tenancy ended and the contents placed in a storage unit. We were entrusted with the key to that unit and on the notes here it says that we were to hand the key over to you if you made a recovery; if not then we were to donate the contents to charity. Does that make any sense to you, Mrs Allan? Have you been ill?’

I put my head back on the pillow. None of this makes sense.

‘Mrs Allan?’

‘Sorry, yes, I’m still here,’ I say. ‘I’m just trying to take it all in. I have no idea why my husband has acted in this way. We were very happily married, everything was fine and then I had a car accident, my little girl was killed and he … he did this.’

My voice catches and I try my best to suppress the tears that are building up.

‘Oh gosh, I had no idea,’ says Sharon. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘You say you have this key fob at the office,’ I say, edging my way through her sympathetic noises.

‘Yes,’ she says, her voice lifting. ‘You’re welcome to come and collect it whenever you like.’

‘I can come this morning,’ I say, looking at my watch. It’s just after 9.30.

‘Fine,’ says Sharon. ‘I’m here all day. We’re just opposite the war memorial. You can’t miss our sign.’

‘Okay,’ I say, getting up from the bed. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

‘Mrs Allan?’

A woman with a toothy smile greets me at the door as I walk into the estate agents.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You must be Sharon.’

‘That’s right,’ she says.

She’s a large woman – big-boned, as my mother would have said – with blonde hair cut in rather dated layers. Her face is overly made-up and she smells of talcum powder. She reminds me of the women who worked behind the make-up counters in the department store my mother used to drag me through when I was a child.

‘Do come through,’ she says. ‘I just have to retrieve the fob from our safe downstairs. Can I get you a tea or coffee while you wait?’