Audrey inclined her head very slightly. Her thin grey hair was pulled back from her face, showing her bones. Her ringless hand, netted all over the back with dark veins and sinews, stroked the cat’s fur, head to haunch, head to haunch, in long deliberate sweeps. How did she know, exactly? My knowledge of her was almost non-existent, apart from what she had told me herself. All I could be certain of was that her name appeared in Ted’s old thumb-indexed address book, he had saved a photograph of her that was now lost, and that in her turn she had cared enough about him, or about something, to appear at his funeral decked out in her dusty fox fur.

I looked at her, trying to catch a smile in her eyes in order to return it. But Audrey’s face was closed tight and the only emotion I could discern was anger. Ted had borrowed money from her and had never returned it, and therefore it was hardly surprising that she felt no warmth towards him or me. Yet somehow I didn’t think this was the whole story. I was also sure that whatever the story might turn out to be, Audrey was at the heart of it.

I plunged on, talking almost at random in the hope that the flood of words would carry me towards what I wanted to say. ‘Now he’s gone I catch the scent of him everywhere. Can you understand what I mean by that? I used to think I didn’t love him. My memory tells me I didn’t, but there’s a much deeper sense than memory that suggests I must have done. Still do. His presence catches me unawares, the way smelling a familiar smell immediately takes you straight into another place before you can even formulate a thought.

‘I’ve come here because I don’t know much about Ted’s life. He hid everything from me, even a prison sentence. But if I can find out some more about those days when he and I were living in Dorset Avenue together, from the time my mother died until I grew up and left home, I might understand more about who he really was and why we lost each other. It might help to exorcise the past.’

Audrey shifted the cat’s weight and it flexed its claws in warning across her knees. ‘I thought you were going to say exorcise him.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that.’

I wanted to return the genie to the bottle, perhaps. The little crystal bottle with the dried brown residue of the last drop of perfume, caught like a tear at the bottom. I gathered my resources for a further admission. ‘I thought he didn’t love me.’

I had barely time to register what a wail of bitterness this sounded before Audrey snapped back, ‘Did it occur to you that he thought just the same about you?’