PC Delliers sits in the very back row. She gives me a smile and a nod as I pass. Then I spot Marianne, sitting near the front. When she sees us, glancing over her shoulder, she stands up and comes over, leaning heavily on her crutch. She leans in to hug me, just like old friends. I wonder how much this day will cost her, how hard it will be for her to learn Sarah’s reality, unpick the gold-edged image she’s held and let it go.

‘This is Alastair,’ I tell her. ‘The man you told me about, Sarah’s ex-boyfriend.’

I’ve set Marianne straight about Alastair; she was suspicious of him, though only looking out for me, but now I know that Marianne and Alastair are both people I can trust. Now when I introduce them, she hugs Alastair too. I think of the funeral that no one came to. The difference this time. Friends of Sarah’s are here. Maybe even family too.

I look around the room again, but I still don’t see Freya. Instead, there is a scattering of people I take to be journalists. Maybe now there will be full articles about Sarah. I imagine now they will release her name. I try to imagine what kind of stories they will print. Macabre stories, or compassionate ones. I think again about the statement I wrote. Whether any of that will form part of their truth.

Freya isn’t here and I’m taken aback by the weight of disappointment in my chest. Usually, in inquest cases, I’ve learned, it is the family who are so desperate for clarity. So much of an inquest is for them. They are the ones, normally, who so need answers. Instead, this time, it was Sarah’s only family fighting tooth and nail to keep things hidden.

And then I see her, slipping in at the back. When she sees me, she smiles, her eyes meeting mine, but I find myself unable to smile back. Instead I turn away. I wonder what I can possibly say to her. I feel as though I have so much, and so little.

But before I can wonder any further, we begin.

The first witness is the pathologist who carried out the post mortem. He describes how the body – Sarah’s body – was identified from her dental records. The coroner’s officer reads from Sarah’s medical records. Her history of allergies to wasp stings; tallying the dates of when she last renewed her Epi-pen. Not recently enough.