What had happened to all of us? Lucy and Max, my darling bat-babies, hanging upside down on their climbing frame. The joy of it all. Our swimsuits hanging side by side on the washing line in Dorset. Greg’s and mine; the children’s. We’d eat supper with the windows open and the moths blundered against the lamps. The next day we’d be swimming again and we’d wring out our costumes and peg them on the line and have supper and nobody would grow up.

Yet we did, because here was I at seventy-one, lying on the grass with my lover’s lover in a litter-strewn playground in Elstree, sharing a spliff.

Johanna said: ‘So I might be lacking in empathy but I’m still a human being and I thought: poor old Doug. Shafted by his best mate, business down the toilet. Cal had been such a shit.’ She paused. ‘And you come into this, too.’ She inhaled deeply, and held it in for a long time. I waited tensely. Finally she blew out a plume of smoke. ‘I might as well tell you, now you’re here. How I hated you, too.’

‘Me?’

She didn’t pass me the joint. Carefully she raised it to her lips again. Her hand was trembling. ‘When Angie died I thought he and I would finally get it together. Me and Cal. I thought, give him a few months to mourn her. Remember, there was no hint of anything dodgy; it was apparently an aneurism. Angie had high cholesterol but she kept forgetting to take her pills. So it was presumed to be a clot. There wasn’t even a postmortem.’ Johanna took another drag. ‘So when she died I expected him to be devastated and I kept my distance. Just sympathetic, you know, a shoulder to cry on. But then, blow me down, you came along. Pipped me to the post, didn’t you? For a while I didn’t see him—he was with you I guess—but soon he came sneaking back, presuming things were going to carry on as before. Of course I was hurt, but know what? I welcomed him back with open arms. What a wuss! Who’d believe I’m a Black Belt? What’s that song? “I’m Just a Woman”.’

‘Look, I was pretty hurt too. When I found out about you.’

Johanna ignored me. ‘I was dead sorry for myself, and even a bit sorry for my husband, so to spite Calvin I told Douggie everything. Including Angie’s decision to change her will and leave it all to Extinction Rebellion. How she’d made an appointment to see her solicitor, the week before she died. I’d no idea how significant this was, but Doug was spitting furious with Calvin, of course—the man had ruined him—and he started digging around. I don’t know what he found but it was enough to go to the police.’