It had been a stupid mistake to start with that one. Ruth had met a Nancy, now she thought about it, at a dinner in this very room about two years ago. She remembered a big woman with a mesmerizingly glossy weave, in her mid-twenties; Nancy who couldn’t stop laughing at Clio’s jokes, who followed her round the room adoringly, helped carry the plates in, helped clear the table; Nancy, who later whispered to Ruth that Clio had volunteered to take in her auntie, to help her asylum claim. Clio never mentioned it herself. Too shy, Nancy had said. She don’t want people to know all the good things she doing.

Too shy. Ruth had covered a snigger with a cough when she realized Nancy wasn’t joking. She’d never really thought much about Clio’s refugee work – my Nigerian girls, she’d call them if she brought it up – but she knew she’d been running a music group for the women and kids living in soon-to-be-demolished schemes in North Glasgow while their asylum claims had been debated, and that occasionally she went to court with them. But Clio didn’t really talk about these things with Ruth. That wasn’t the point of Ruth, any more.

She pulled all the papers out, trying to stack them in what felt like an order – invoices on one side, bills and writs from the housing association on the other. She didn’t want to risk any other seemingly innocuous-looking letterheads, any more unexpected outpourings. She wondered how a person could exist in the world with such minimal family. Didn’t everyone have a cloud of blood relatives who would bustle in and know intrinsically what to do, how to go about this? She imagined her own sister managing her death, imagined the paperwork being processed, her mother consoled, every important person on her Facebook notified swiftly and beautifully, within the hour. But Clio had seemed to shed connections as she’d got older, really. There had been friends who adored her and were always there and spoken about, and then they were never heard of again. Over by the fireplace, a couple of photo albums had been stacked, and Ruth pounced upon them, sat down cross-legged on the floor. Only the first few pages had been stuck down, of course, the rest over-full of loose photos which slipped out as she tilted the album towards her. A very much younger Clio than Ruth had ever known, surrounded by faces she’d never seen before, grainy shots, half-remembered. There was no way of tracing these people and why would they even care? Because they once sat in a bar and put their arm round this woman’s neck while someone shone a flash at them? Just write down some fucking phone numbers, Clio, Ruth shouted to the emptiness, then realized that she was holding a wedding picture.

Glasgow, 2007