I had breathed it twice, that perfume. Once at a party and once, terribly, in my own home. I slowly placed the paper back on the desk and began looking among the items on the desktop, searching through the jumble of instruments and papers for something that would speak of her. The scent was based on rich Virginia tobacco, she had said.

I shoved the instruments and pens aside and rifled through the letters and papers, checking for anything with her name. The package could only have contained a gift for her, I was certain. I searched through it all, turning it all over.

But no, there was nothing else. No note, no letter. And I took a step back, smoothing my palms down my skirt, berating myself. Such a fool I had been, and so wrong. I had been jumping to conclusions, nothing more. I stared out the window and the broken Houses of Parliament filled my view. Would I have acted like this a month ago? Before that party when she had shone like the sun? The party that surely led to a death that still has me twisted in a pain that won’t let go? No, no, I was sure that I wouldn’t have. A gunboat on patrol passed slowly along the Thames, its searchlight eerie in the smog, and I watched it disappear from sight.

So I pulled myself together, took another deep breath and turned to leave. I would wait calmly for Nick to return and never breathe a word of this to him. That would be for the best.

But then, just as my fingers touched the brass handle, I caught sight of a side table by the door. It had a short pile of brown folders stacked haphazardly on its polished surface; and there was something strange slipped into the middle of the pile. It looked like the edge of a large photograph, seemingly out of place among the medical notes, as if it had been deliberately hidden. I went over and lifted the upper folders and, as I did so, I found that it wasn’t a photograph I was holding, it was the cover of a magazine – an old society glossy full of pictures of actors and young debutantes in furs outside nightclubs – the type of frivolous publication that had entirely disappeared under the new, classless regime. Its title, On the Town, was blazed across the top in red lettering.

Tensely, I opened it, feeling the smooth paper on my palms, and flicked through a few pages of scattered black-and-white images and unattributed gossip before I noticed that the corner of one page towards the centre of the publication was dog-eared – as if Nick had opened it time after time. My fingers turned quickly to that spread of paper. The pages fell away. And there she was.