I told them that as far as I knew, they rarely spoke. They’d both moved on since the divorce – which was as amicable as could be in the end. There’d been tears and a lot of soul-searching. She’d been hurt when he’d told her he didn’t love her any more, of course she had. And then angry when she’d found out he already had someone else lined up. But when all was said and done, they’d simply grown apart. He’d never, to my knowledge, been violent towards Clare and I didn’t think he was the kind of man who would be. There was no reason to suspect that he’d have murdered his ex-wife. But then again, the notion that anyone at all would want to murder Clare seemed completely absurd.

I felt as if I was being singularly unhelpful, unable to give the police anything to go on. Any questions I’d asked, they didn’t really answer. Everything was ‘too early to tell’, or they weren’t ‘at liberty to say’. They’d assured me no stone was being left unturned, that every avenue was being explored.

They used all the clichéd terms that police could use, which just made it all feel even less real. As if we were all acting in a TV show, saying our lines. A grisly-faced detective would show up at any minute and swear at his underlings before declaring there’d been a murder, in a thick Scottish accent.

It was impossible to get my head around the idea that somewhere my friend was lying cold, dead, carved up by a pathologist. I shook that image from my head each and every time it pushed back in and tried to focus on what the police were saying.

By the time I left, all I wanted to do was to feel something tangible. Michael replied to my text message almost immediately – telling me that of course I could call round. He looked forward to it. He hoped I was okay.

A wave of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on washed over me. It was desire, mixed with affection, mixed with guilt. I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror, glad I’d fixed my make-up and brushed my hair at home. My look still screamed middle-aged teacher, but it was presentable. I didn’t look as haggard as I had earlier.

Guessing I could probably spend an hour at most with Michael before any suspicion was aroused, I set off, eager to get to him as soon as I could.