Most of all I wanted to find a clue to why she had chosen another man over me.

But there was nothing out of the ordinary. The bottom drawer was stacked with holiday brochures and bank statements. Perhaps an extravagant purchase or strange pattern of spending might spill more of the secrets she’d kept from me. Had Ben given her money? Had she bought him expensive gifts?

Again, there was nothing that looked suspicious on the face of it. No doubt Ben had picked up the tab for everything. He never missed an opportunity to remind everyone how wealthy he was. Probably Mel most of all. I remembered her words from yesterday.

He told me he was in love with me like he’d never loved anyone before. That he’d do anything for me, anything I wanted – leave Beth, leave Alice. Leave everything behind so we could be together.

Further searching turned up nothing of note in her other drawers and cupboards.

This is pointless. Do something practical, useful. Necessary.

Back in the kitchen, drinking a strong coffee, I hunted for an old copy of the Yellow Pages before remembering that Mel had thrown it out long ago. Who needs that cluttering the place up when you’ve got Google? she’d said. She was right, in a way, but it was still good to have something with pages, something you could hold in your hand. Google was fine but you couldn’t turn down a corner and cross out entries that were no good. Even though I’d charged it yesterday, my phone was almost dead already so I plugged it in and went upstairs to the PC in the study. The bigger screen was better for web browsing anyway.

The monitor flickered into life as the fan started up inside the base unit. The PC was nearing the end of its useful life and usually took a few minutes to boot up. It beeped and whirred and went through its usual start-up procedures. While I waited I thought of what Naylor had told me an hour before, the proof of life enquiries to establish when Ben had last raised his head above the parapet. The computer beeped and displayed some incomprehensible message about BIOS and RAM and memory and various other stuff that I didn’t understand.

I hit return to get it moving.

The screen went blue, then black. The fan whirred slower, then kicked in again like an old Hoover on its last legs. Down and up. Typical. This is the moment the PC chooses to finally give up the ghost, in my hour of need. Just what I don’t need. The red light by the webcam came on but the screen stayed black. Various chugging and whirring noises came from the base unit beneath the desk.

Still nothing on the monitor. A black screen.

‘Just give me a break here,’ I said, talking to the machine.