She closes the door with a click, then stands, breathing hard, her back against the wall. She has shoe covers and plastic gloves in her hand, and now puts them on, not wanting to leave a trace of her having been there that day.

What is she doing? she asks herself. The house seems tidy, with a faint smell of detergent in the air. Has Amy been cleaning? she wonders. Cleaning what? Who cleans when they’ve just been told their husband is dead?

Freya’s more than mindful she hasn’t got long, but she can’t resist looking around. She barely registered it the previous day. This is the house of her imagination, Jon and Amy’s marital home, and she takes in the details as she walks. The kitchen – worktops bare, washing-up tidied away. The lounge – cushions plumped since Freya and Robin were there, coasters stacked in a neat pile on the coffee table. It’s show-home perfect – impersonal, fastidiously neat. Her own house is nothing like this, especially since she found out about Jon’s death. She left it in a state: the empty wine glass on its side on the bedroom carpet, clothes scattered, washing-up piled in the sink. She didn’t have the energy to do anything about it, and wonders again how Amy, the grieving wife, can keep her house looking so spotless.

A bookshelf runs the length of the main room, and Freya traces her fingers along the spines, wondering which are his and which are Amy’s. She remembers a comment once, that Amy doesn’t read much, scorn in his voice. The paperbacks turn into non-fiction. Economics textbooks from Jon’s university days, a few travel books, and then some strange ones. Your Day-by-Day Pregnancy. A Midwife’s Guide to Your Newborn. Is Amy pregnant? The idea shocks Freya.

Jon hadn’t mentioned still sleeping with his wife. And Freya had never asked. But they were a married couple in their late thirties; it was more than likely children would be on the agenda. They’d always used protection, but he wouldn’t have used condoms with his wife, would he?

For the first time Freya wonders about other women. She’d always assumed she was the only one, but if Jon cheated on his wife once, what would have stopped him from doing it before? Or even at the same time?

What else had he been lying about?

She suddenly feels hot, a surge of nausea rolling up from her stomach. Saliva fills her mouth and she runs towards a closed door in the hallway, guessing correctly at the location of the downstairs toilet. The door bangs against the wall. She falls to her knees, throwing up the toast from this morning’s crappy breakfast. She stays there for a moment, vomit abating to a painful dry retch, then sits back, wiping her eyes, her nose, her mouth, with a piece of toilet roll.