She knows it’s them, not because she recognises the car but because she’s learned how they operate. There are always two, this time a woman and a man, side by side in the front seats, both in white shirts, and even though they must have heard her coming, they don’t turn to look, but keep facing forwards, like automatons yet to be switched on. She knows it’s them, and she knows they must have something of face-to-face importance to say, or they’d have phoned. A word comes to her mind – remains. Instinct tells her this is going to be about remains.

She pulls up on the driveway and turns off the engine, but she doesn’t get out of the car. She’s savouring these last few moments, the final moments when she isn’t formally bereaved, when her son might still – an outside chance, bleak odds but odds nonetheless – come home. In the rear-view mirror she watches them climb from their car. She knows the woman; her last name’s Naylor, and she always said, Call me Rachel, but Claire never did. The other one was here that very first night, a younger man, lean in his tight suit-trousers, walking two steps behind the woman.

She wishes Matt were here, but Matt might be anywhere. He might be coming home tonight or he might be away; these days she barely notices and doesn’t really care. Over time, there have been reversals. In the early days, she clung to him, hated him to leave. Now she’s glad to have an empty house: no need to cook, no reason not to collapse on the sofa with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and banal TV.

When the officers reach her car, there’s an awkward moment when the driver’s window is closed between them and the policewoman’s looking in at her expectantly. Claire thinks she would like to freeze time right here and never know what’s coming next, but the scene is too ridiculous to be borne for more than seconds. She turns the key a notch in the ignition, and the dashboard lights flash on. She presses the button in the door armrest, and the window slides open.

Naylor is almost smiling, and Claire’s wondering how she dare.

‘How are you, Claire?’ The question’s unnecessary, answered in Claire’s pale, unmade-up face and careless clothes. Her hand on the steering wheel is bony and blue-veined. Naylor remembers the woman she met on that first night, sleekly coiffured, her nails recently done. In the space of the next few hours, that well-groomed woman disappeared, and Naylor has never seen her since. Those once-glossy fingernails are marred with white spots, which Naylor has read is a sign of zinc deficiency. Claire has the same washed-out, malnourished sallowness as women on prison diets of white bread and margarine, the result of being institutionalised, of never breathing fresh air.