It was the most beautiful spring. Everybody noticed this. The grass was greener, the sky bluer. With little traffic, we could hear the birdsong ringing out. For our daily exercise Azra and I jogged around her local park. It wasn’t much to look at, just some taped-off swings, some grass and bushes. But even here, now the world had closed down, nature exploded into life with glorious abundance, as if in compensation. Flowers burst out of the cracks between the paving stones. And next to Azra’s flat, seemingly overnight, the rowan tree erupted into blossom. Nature was taking over, even in Tottenham. Look! I’ve been here all this time. You’ve ignored me at your peril. With no exhaust fumes, we could smell the fragrance in the air.

There’s a before and an after. In hindsight, you can see the moment when everything changed. At the time, it was all confused by the pandemic. Azra’s edginess with me, I presumed, was due to the general stress. As I said, she seemed more doomy about the whole situation than I was. And there was no denying that, now we were locked down together, the flat was increasingly claustrophobic. Nor did it help that my elderly cat was suffering from incontinence, and the vet’s was closed. But I presumed that in a few weeks this strange period would be over.

It was now mid-April and Azra was looking more like a Linda. Her hair had grown back not just softer, but in prim curls, like a perm. ‘It looks so suburban!’ she wailed. The hairdressers were shut, of course, so I suggested I cut it back into what we called ‘the Annie Lennox elfin look’, and she’d dye it blond.

It was a beautiful day and we climbed out onto the roof terrace, carrying a couple of chairs.

Azra sat down. She paused, then swung round to look at me. ‘Do I trust you?’ she asked, squinting against the sun.

‘Of course.’

There was a silence. She was about to say something, and stopped. She shrugged and turned back.

I was puzzled. She wasn’t just talking about my hair-dressing skills. There was something odd about her tone, something laboured. I’d heard that an actor who was playing a child abuser was told by his director to keep a large stone in his pocket throughout the weeks of filming. So you never forget, he was told. I realised, then, that I’d had this sensation for some time now, some secret freight Azra was carrying around. That day, however, I simply presumed she was nervous about having an amateur cut her hair.