Out of force of habit I check my messages and emails. None. I check WhatsApp. Nothing. I’m not sure why I even have the app. I click on to Facebook. My only Facebook Friends are Angela (reluctantly), a couple of people I used to work with at the Conference Centre, and a few from those lacklustre jobs after I was made redundant. Today on Facebook there’s not a lot going on. Duncan in Bookings has a hangover; Florrie from the betting shop wants to know if anyone has seen her cat; Jane at the budget book depot has declared today ‘Worst day ever’ and has received a flurry of concerned ‘You OK, hun?’s, which she is enigmatically ignoring, apart from a solitary, ‘I’ll pm you’, to one lucky enquirer. And Sally Ann from the Co-op has cryptically ‘checked in’ to the local hospital without saying why. Oh, and my sister has a new pair of high-heeled sandals that apparently merit the caption, ‘Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.’

‘What shall we have for lunch?’ calls Dad. ‘I could rustle up a quick chicken parmigiana.’

‘Yes please, sounds lovely.’ I come off Facebook and head to Safari to update the news article about Philippa – I have it bookmarked now – and when it loads there’s a new piece of information. A piece of information I read twice.

On the afternoon of her death, Philippa Helens had been out for an early celebratory lunch in Knightsbridge, on the eve of her thirtieth birthday.

‘It’ll be ready in twenty minutes,’ calls Dad from the kitchen. ‘I’m making a side dish of asparagus crespelle.’

‘Fantastic,’ I call back.

I read the short news article for a third time, concentrating on every word. I can hear Dad mumbling to himself in the kitchen over the sound of clanking pans and steam and taps running and things being taken out of and put back into cupboards. I rise from my chair and go and stand at the closed window. A man below drags a tartan shopping trolley into the mouth of the tube station. A pair of teenagers slouch with hands in pockets into the Stop n’ Shop. And I remember a different tube station and the crowds there and I feel incredibly sad for a woman I’ve never met called Philippa Helens.

I also wonder at what point she let go of the balloon.

‘There you go.’

Dad is behind me, standing at my chair and offering his iPad to me.

‘I’m over here, Dad,’ I say, walking back from the window. ‘What have you got there?’

‘It’s a list,’ he says, holding out his iPad to me with the ‘Notes’ app open, ‘of all the other places I’d like to go to.’

‘What?’ I say. ‘I thought you hated it today, going to Camden?’