The couple are so graceful as they waltz around. Prin once saw Mum and Daddy dance like that, ages ago. ‘Look,’ she tells Jane now. ‘There they are, the lovely husband and wife. They can be your mummy and daddy, can you see them? Just watch,’ she tells her cousin. ‘Just watch.’

And so Jane watches, and as she does her breathing slows and her body relaxes and in only a little minute or two, her crying eases, just like Prin hoped it would.

Chapter 13

I have to wait until Wednesday – five whole days – before I can visit Marianne. On Wednesdays I finish work at midday, and it’s supposed to be the time when I sort out my life, with a precious few hours to myself before I have to pick up Charlie. I should be using it to go to the supermarket, clean the flat, tackle all those jobs on my to-do list. But instead this week I will use it to travel across London to the address Marianne gave me. Way out along the District line: Ealing Broadway.

I try to hurry through all my work tasks for the morning, but my concentration isn’t great; I have to double-check everything and I still find mistakes. There’s so much I’m trying to carry in my head, so many question marks and unknowns, like little holes that the details of my work tumble into.

When I see Abayomi come back from a meeting, I go through to his office with Sarah’s file. ‘Abayomi? Do you have a minute?’

He is still shrugging himself out of his coat and he turns to me with a faint frown on his forehead.

‘I need to update you on Ms Jones,’ I tell him. I haven’t forgotten the protocols he spelled out for me. ‘The next of kin … The police still haven’t been able to trace anyone, so I’m not sure what to do from here.’ I don’t say anything about the email in my personal inbox. I have no idea how to tell him about that. And I don’t tell him about my own un-protocol’d plan. It feels completely separate from this. It’s not like before when I lied about the spreadsheet; this is personal business, my own need to find answers, and it would only complicate things to discuss it here at work. And what if someone here tried to stop me? I’m not sure I’d be able to bear that.

Abayomi runs a hand across his brow. ‘There’s no executor? No relative?’

‘Not that they can find, no.’

‘That’s … I mean …’ He shakes his head. ‘But all right. Okay. Then we’ll need to write to the Public Trustee. We’ll have to sort it out through them.’