I shook my head. ‘I’m surprised you aren’t aware of her case, or you weren’t made aware. No, it wasn’t an illness as such. She took her own life.’

Constable King couldn’t quite hide the look of shock from her face.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. That must be very difficult.’

‘It is,’ I said, knowing that ‘very difficult’ was a massive understatement.

It came out of nowhere. Or at least I think it seemed to. There were none of the signs. She hadn’t sat down and told me she was feeling particularly depressed or that she wanted to harm herself. She didn’t seem demotivated. She hadn’t given away possessions. It had never felt like she was saying goodbye. She’d had her problems over the years, of course. We’d worked hard – supported her through CBT and NLP and group therapy. I thought she was okay. I thought she’d beaten it. Finally.

She’d appeared to be stable when it happened. I’d actually thought she was finally beating it all, that she’d put her demons to rest once and for all, and that she was moving onwards and upwards. It had been months, if not more, since she’d spoken to me about low moods. She’d seemed happier than she’d ever been.

Of course, I was told afterwards that I’d been blind to her moods. That it was easier for me to think she was okay. Those words hurt. They were so unforgivable that they took what was left of my family and tore it utterly asunder.

As far as I was aware, one day I’d had my daughter, sitting with her two children in my kitchen, talking about any old nonsense – Christmas, school shoes, what we’d watched on TV the night before – and the following night she was gone.

Her husband had come home to find the two children sitting in front of the TV. There was no sign of Laura. The children, Ava and Max, were only seven and nine. She wouldn’t have left them on their own. She never did before. They told their daddy that Mummy had gone to the shops and she’d left him a note in the kitchen.

He’d imagined she’d be home soon. The shop was a five-minute drive. Even given heavy traffic and queues at the checkout, he’d figured she’d be back any minute. So he busied himself fixing his dinner and looking after the kids, and all but forgot about Laura’s note.

But the minutes ticked on.

‘How long ago did Mummy go?’ he asked the kids.

They shrugged. Her eldest, my granddaughter, Ava, told her daddy it was ‘just after we finished homework’, adding, ‘she’s been gone a long time, Daddy, hasn’t she?’