Maybe I was mad. I’d been behaving oddly, I knew that. I flung myself on the sofa. My heart pounded and I was suddenly overwhelmed with grief. For my life; for the past, jammed into every corner of this house; for the disappearance of all the people I loved most dearly. I thought of Greg and Azra leaning towards each other in that Turkish restaurant, how they cracked my world open. And all I was left with was Greg’s exercise bike and old school reports and his cupboard full of clothes and … and so much stuff. What had he said? People bust their guts doing jobs they don’t like to buy stuff they don’t need, just to help corporate criminals ruin the planet. Thanks, Greg, so what the hell do I do with it?

I climbed the stairs and crawled into bed, fully clothed. I thought I’d got over my depression but it came roaring back, I heard the creak of its greasy black wings as I pulled the duvet over my head.

The old torpor descended on me. I wandered like a sleep-walker around the house. Limply, I stuffed stuff into bin-liners and then collapsed on the sofa, overwhelmed by the scale of the task. I remember gazing at a heap of clothes hangers, the wire ones you get from the dry cleaners, locked in their communal, clattering embrace. Would I ever, ever manage to untangle them?

For days I did nothing. There was a finality to packing that I couldn’t quite face. Throwing away things seemed so brutal but what was the point of keeping them when nobody had wanted them for years? And the memories came flooding back. Max on his bicycle seat, clinging to his father, his arms around Greg’s corduroyed midriff. Lucy leaning against her father’s legs as he fixed a picture to the wall. Tiny moments from long ago. Was Greg adulterous even then? He’d once admitted to finding Rosie Hargreaves sexy, with her avid mouth and bony Egon Schiele body. When she and her husband were going through a bad patch Greg had walked her home and hadn’t returned for two hours.

Then there were my own long-ago snapshots—always the holidays, always in Deal. The photos were black-and-white, of course; the Sellotape had dried, decades earlier, and when I opened the album my childhood dropped off the page. I picked up the photos and remembered the arcade, to which I was addicted. How I trembled with hope as I slotted in one more penny. That tottering cliff of pennies, surely one more coin would dislodge them in a clatter of riches beyond imagining? Then there was the grabber, roving over the stuffed toys and never quite grabbing, being just too feeble. Ah, the rush to the blood, the beating heart, the inevitable, gutting disappointment!