I showered when I got home, washing away any scent of Michael and what we’d done; let my guilt at having slept with another man wash down the drain along with the soapy water. I slipped into fresh pyjamas and lay down on top of the bed, it being too warm to climb under the covers. Exhaustion washed over me. I was just about to switch off the bedside light, when Paul walked in and sat down on the edge of the bed at my feet.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve handled this all wrong,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know what to say. I can’t get my head around it, so God knows what it’s like for you.’

‘It’s awful for me,’ I said, pulling myself up to sitting. ‘I don’t know how to deal with it either, Paul. My head hurts, and my heart hurts, and I don’t know what actually happened, or how. I don’t even know if I want to know – the very thought of it. That someone did this to her on purpose. They said blood loss, you know. That they thought she bled to death, and my mind just keeps going over and over that. And whoever it was, whatever monster did this, left her on the side of a road like a wounded animal.’ I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them as my voice began to break; I was just so tired now and confused about how I felt about everything. ‘She didn’t deserve this, Paul. And her poor family – her mother and father, Ronan – how will they cope? I’m not sure I could even begin to.’

Paul shuffled up the bed and pulled me into a hug. I felt guilty as I allowed him to comfort me. Not only at what I’d done that evening, but also that I was letting this man hold me when my feelings increasingly lay elsewhere. I wasn’t being honest with him. The hug felt awkward at first, but then it was as if my body remembered how we fitted together, Paul and I. How we knew each other inside and out and, selfishly perhaps, I gave in to the softness of his hug, breathing in the familiar smell of him. I wondered, did he feel the same as I did? That we were falling into old roles, our awkwardness masked by the tragedy we were going through?

‘Do you know what happens next?’ he asked, still holding me close.

I shook my head. There would be a postmortem, if it hadn’t already been carried out. Beyond that I didn’t know. I hadn’t experienced this before.