Outside, through the cold, I make my way to Munroe House. There’s a police officer stationed right outside – I admit I hadn’t expected that – and through the smudged glass of the entrance doors, I glimpse the blue and white of police tape. I have the code but I can’t think of going in, I realize I couldn’t bear to. Now that I’m here, I know what I’ve really come to check, an ugly thought I’ve been trying to explain. I go round the back this time; Ms Jones’s flat faced out the back way. I head down the narrow alleyway that leads round to the scrubby patch of grass.

There’s no sign of police tape here, but I am here trying to make sense of it. How can a body have lain there all this time? I mean, everybody knows (I can hardly bear to put the thought in my head), everyone knows that dead bodies smell. How can her neighbours not have reported anything? I already have the suspicion in my head and when I come around the back it’s confirmed. The bins. Those huge bins overflowing with commercial waste. It is February and cold, too cold for the wasps that usually gather round, but even on a day like today I can smell the rank odour. How many people had grown used to this? How many tenants had put up with this and thought nothing of it, just going about their own daily business? In the flat, the smell I breathed in, it was a mixture of everything: the dead flowers, the dust, rotten food and her body itself that was so withered away. A body wouldn’t smell all that strongly for long. Maybe only a few weeks, not forever.

Picture this. Picture this. The email address flashes again through my head. I know what I saw in that flat. I saw the post piled up and the cobwebs. I’ve heard stories – people lying undiscovered for days, weeks, lonely people, old people, people who lived in the middle of nowhere. People who could go days or weeks without seeing anyone. But this is the middle of London and she was young and surrounded by neighbours and she had guests due for dinner, and pretty cups hanging in her kitchen.

I stand out there at the back of the building, my heart sore in my chest, wishing I could have done something, wishing I had known or could somehow turn back time. I desperately try to picture her: how on earth she might have lived before she died. Pieces of litter blow across the tramped, scuffed grass and suddenly a hard, bright memory jolts through me. I can see it quite clearly, I’m sure, and the recollection tips me off balance.

Because I told PC Delliers that Ms Jones never contacted me. That she never made a query or complaint to the office.