Maxine answers one of the many questions I haven’t voiced. ‘It was a two-month holiday let, paid by credit card. They haven’t traced the holder of the card, but it didn’t belong to the woman who was occupying the house. She moved in a week ago – used a false name.’

We crunch our way up the stairs, along a roll of white paper. I can see on either side of it that the stairs have been sanded and painted.

At the top of the landing, straight in front of us, is an open bedroom door. A tall woman in another moon suit, glasses peeping out of her otherwise-covered face, emerges and squeezes onto the landing with us. ‘Hey, Maxine,’ the woman says.

‘Hey, Tess.’ It isn’t the forensic drama that brings home the fact that I am being allowed to see another version of Maxine, who is not slouching. It is Maxine’s use of the word ‘Hey’ and its attendant chumminess.

‘Needless to say,’ says Tess, ‘don’t touch anything.’

‘Sure thing,’ Maxine says, in more of the new Maxine language.

Tess does not ask who I am when she motions for us to follow her. There is a frizz of grey hair on her temple, which has escaped the head covering. There are smile lines around her eyes, and my guess is that in the part of her life that doesn’t involve space suits and corpses, this woman is restrainedly contented, with wry good humour.

Instead of moving forward when Tess beckons, though, I freeze. My head is telling me to go in, but my body does not seem to want to.

I’d thought the sweat had dried on me in Maxine’s car after my run, but I am wet again, beneath my breasts, down my spine. The mask over my mouth is stopping me from breathing. My scalp is itchy and hot beneath the hood.

Maxine puts a hand on my shoulder. The last time she did that I practically chopped it off. She says, ‘You don’t know the strength of a person until they’ve been tested.’

I nearly say, No shit, Sherlock, which is one of Milly’s favourite expressions. Milly loves the word shit. Instead, I manage a more restrained, ‘Thanks for your wisdom,’ and for the first time in forever, Maxine visibly blanches.

Then
The Forgotten Things

Two years and four months earlier

Cornwall, Mid-December 2016

Zac left for London early this morning for a British Cardiovascular Society symposium. Tomorrow he will fly to the Ukraine for a fleeting visit, to do some teaching in a hospital in Kiev. Before he drove away, I leaned into the open car window for a final kiss goodbye, my hair unbrushed and circles under my eyes after a night of endlessly being sick.