Beth starts to smile again, to regain lost ground, but they’re both distracted by another car joining the line of vehicles on the pavement. It’s a nondescript colour and model, made worse by the thin glaze of Wandsworth pollution covering its panels, and Beth isn’t surprised when two almost identical men in jeans, hoodies and stab vests climb out.

‘Excuse me,’ PC Curtis says, dipping his head slightly and turning towards the detectives. Beth watches them talk on the pavement for a few moments, then move as a threesome towards the shopfront where the four paramedics and a second uniformed police officer are still loitering. The newly arrived ambulance will transport the body to the mortuary at St George’s Hospital, Beth hears the older paramedic explain. She wishes they’d hurry up; surely the dead man deserves better than a grubby concrete floor and an audience of strangers for his final resting place. At last, the group fragments and Beth watches the uniformed officers, and one of the detectives, head inside the shop. The other detective, the slightly broader of the two, strides over in her direction. She smiles at him, warmly.

‘Thank you for waiting. I’m DC Stone, Wandsworth CID. Mrs Packard, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, that’s right. And no problem at all. It was the least I could do.’

‘I don’t agree,’ the detective observes. ‘A lot of people would have chosen to do considerably less than you’ve done.’ There’s an admiration in his tone that Beth wasn’t expecting, and it makes the space between her shoulder blades widen a fraction. But now she feels like crying, so she blinks and draws them back together.

‘I was just on my way home from a night out with my girlfriends,’ she explains. ‘A Christmas get-together before Christmas actually kicks in and we’re all too busy to celebrate.’

He smiles, but it’s a polite one. He doesn’t understand her world.

‘I live on this road, but further up towards Clapham Common,’ she continues, wafting her hand eastwards and up the hill opposite. She can’t help a note of pride slipping into her voice. When she and Simon first moved to London, they bought a flat in Fulham with a little help from Simon’s parents. It was small and the mortgage used up most of their salaries (not that hers contributed much) but its location was what the estate agent called aspirational, and selling it smoothed the way for future house moves. Beth dreamed of having a family home between Wandsworth and Clapham Commons, so when they returned from a few years in Singapore with a baby in tow, it was the first place they looked. ‘I was on my way home from the station when I saw him,’ she explains. ‘He was slumped in the doorway; I knew straight away that he was seriously ill.’

‘And that’s when you called the emergency services?’