Alison had been dead against Ruth making the trip to Ayr, to Clio’s never-talked-about mother, but Ruth had been resolute. The nursing-home staff needed warned, if nothing else, she’d said. She didn’t want some unscrupulous bastard journalist sneaking in and breaking it to her, taking pictures, getting quotes on the sly. Alison had taken the day off and insisted on waiting in the car outside Glendale Retirement Home. Inside, Ruth sat there with this shrivelled person, this Eileen Johnstone who looked nothing like Clio, patted the proffered hand awkwardly while the old woman’s sentences roamed out of the corners of her mouth, lapsing in and out of years in a single breath. Finally, Ruth had almost snapped at her.

‘She’s dead, though. You understand that, don’t you? Your daughter Clio. She’s dead.’

Alison had wrapped her shaken girlfriend up in her own coat in the passenger seat and driven her home again.

Ruth had never been any good at sitting still. She was a nurse, not a patient. Alison’s perpetual need to fuss over her had always been her least favourite part of their relationship and it grew more and more intense the longer she stayed in that stuffy little house, blankets and blankets tucked around her. She broke her phone out of its jail cell in her bag, on top of the wardrobe. ‘Try and stay offline,’ she said to the empty house, doing Clio’s impression of Alison’s nasal tones, feeling bad immediately.

Clio’s name was still trending on Twitter. Still! Three days after her death! I mean, my God, she said to the house again, she wasn’t that famous.

Clio Campbell: suicide was over Brexit

Political suicide: Explosive Clio Campbell Suicide Note Reveals Singer’s ‘Martyrdom’

Clio Campbell blames Brexit in suicide note

Clio Campbell: THAT suicide note in full!

But there wasn’t a suicide note, Ruth thought. She had looked, and Alison had looked, just before they left Ruth’s cottage. There had been nothing left for Ruth, just the body, that grimace, the way it changed the air.

And she clicked, and she clicked again.

I’m looking forward to the noise stopping.

That was the first bit she took in. That bit made sense. That had been written by the listless, strained Clio whose unwashed hair had hung down the back of Gran’s old armchair. It was the rest of the letter Ruth had a problem with

I’m gambling on the chance that that same woman dead just might be.