‘I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. I wasn’t sure what to believe. I couldn’t understand what you were saying. You were acting weird. I guess I was, too.’

‘It wasn’t an everyday scenario.’ He uttered a laugh, then quickly extinguished it. ‘Jesus, Petra, I’m so sorry about your mother.’

She took a long breath in, trying to control her breathing and avoid tears – but if you can’t break down here in a fucking banking hall, then where? She let the polite mask fall. ‘It was supposed to be routine. We were just chatting away that afternoon. She was fine.’ The people around her were shifting awkwardly, the sour woman behind her glaring at her like Petra’s sodden sadness was a burden on her – maybe it was. But Petra didn’t care; she carried on crying. ‘She was going to be discharged. That’s the only reason I went to the fucking show…’

‘You went there to find me,’ Vincent said. ‘I don’t know how to apologise.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. But was it? She’d thought about it a thousand times over the last ten days. Who would she have blamed if Helena had died while Petra was in her flat watching some shit on TV, which is inevitably what would have happened if she had not gone to Sling Sutton. She hadn’t been planning to sit by Helena’s bedside that night. There had been no reason to. She would have answered her phone, though. Yeah. But Helena died too suddenly anyway. The arrest had been too quick, too sudden – that’s what the doctors had said. By the time they called, she was already dead.

‘It’s not your fault,’ she repeated as the banking consultant called her forward.

When she’d signed the forms and got out of the bank, Petra was hit by a cold squall of rain. She huddled in the doorway of the shut-down bookshop and called Vincent back.

‘Did Beccie say what she needed to say to you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She didn’t want you to… join her there. After all.’

‘No.’