‘I see.’ I wondered if he knew what had happened, how things had changed between Nick and me.

‘When did he leave?’ I asked.

‘About an hour ago.’

‘An hour ago?’

‘As I said.’ He sounded as irritable as ever.

‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’ It just seemed a bit odd. Nick’s Mondays were usually his busiest time – people would store up their problems all weekend and demand to see their GP first thing. Nick’s patients – many of them Party officials – brooked no refusal and he would normally just snatch a sandwich at his desk for lunch in order to meet all their expectations. And yet he had gone out for a walk at noon. ‘The schedule is usually packed, isn’t it?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Well, I’ll wait for him.’

‘As you wish.’

I sat in one of the plush seats that Nick had rescued from the lines of bombed-out houses – there was something luxurious about sinking into an armchair that had come from a townhouse once lived in by Lord Such-and-Such – and watched Charles glancing at me out of the corner of his eye as he returned to his work, obviously annoyed by my presence. Lorries shuddered noisily along the road as I waited, and somewhere below us two people seemed to be having a blazing row about the cost of office stationery.

After a while the second post arrived, fluttering through the letterbox, but that was all the excitement to be had and I wished Nick would come back. The time ticked slowly and interminably by, marked by a carriage clock in the corner of the room.

Eventually, I grew tired of watching Charles use two fingers to laboriously type up letters, and I could see that the door to Nick’s office was unlocked and ajar. So, ignoring Charles’s protestations, I wandered in. The desk was chaotically strewn with the usual mess of pens, a stethoscope, wooden tongue-depressors in a short vase, drug phials spilling out of cartons, a pharmacology textbook and buff folders of medical notes. And there was something else: torn yellow paper in which a small package had been wrapped. Curious, I took it in my hand.

The paper was embossed with the name of a Bristol shop that had once sold perfume to society ladies and now sold it to the wives of Party men. As I lifted it and held it in the air, a scent drifted up, the remnant of what had been bound in the paper. Its sweet, sultry notes were familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It was a strange thing to find. ‘Charles?’ I called out.

‘Yes, Mrs Cawson,’ he replied, in the same tone as before.

‘Why has …’ But then I stopped. I remembered where I had smelled it before. And my eyes gently closed in utter pain.