Azra had carried on with her adventures. I’d knuckled down and remained faithful to Greg. There had been the odd temptation along the way but I’d snuffed it out due to cowardice and loyalty. Due to love, in fact—even the frayed and darned love of a long marriage.

And look where that had got me.

It all remained a fantasy until I opened the local paper, one day in July. In fact I’d forgotten all about it.

But as I turned the pages my eye was caught by a death notice. ‘Susan Edwardes, beloved wife of Evan, mother of Gina and Lisa …’ A photo of a doughy, plain face. Susan had died aged sixty-eight. Her funeral was to be held in two days’ time at Golders Green Crematorium.

My heartbeat quickened. Why not just go along for a lark? A dare? A diversion from the aching loneliness of summer? That’s how I thought of it at the time. It’s hard to remember, after everything that happened, but that was my motive. Maybe I was fooling myself; if I made light of it I wouldn’t get scared.

In fact my hands were shaking as I twisted round, trying to zip myself into the dress. I needed another pair of hands. How I longed for a man! Already, ludicrously, I was making up scenarios for me and Evan Edwardes, the grieving widower.

It was a sunny day. The crem was only a couple of miles away so I decided to walk, carrying my smart shoes in a bag. Over the dress I wore Greg’s black raincoat, which he’d left behind at the house. Paul Smith, rather stylish. Even if I had a suitable hat I couldn’t quite bring myself to wear one. I was fully prepared to flunk it, you see, at the crematorium door.

But I walked straight in.

The West Chapel was packed. She had obviously been popular, this Susan Edwardes. And quite the matriarch. From where I sat I could see the front two rows, reserved for family, filling up with her children and grandchildren. Older people, too, no doubt her husband amongst them. The adults wore black and many of them already clutched tissues to their noses.

I sat next to an elderly lady who peered through her specs at the order of service. As the organ struck up, however, she took out her phone and started texting. This startled me and set me thinking. These people here—how well did they know this dead woman? How well do we know each other?

I thought of Greg, and how little he knew about my past. In forty years we’d hardly spoken about my childhood. Nor had I asked about his. All those years together and I’d never told him about being bullied at school by Stephanie Jenkins, or breaking my arm when tobogganing. About the fox my dad found trapped in the living room the day President Kennedy was shot; how did it get in? Spooky or what? Fur everywhere. I’d never told him about my mother’s miscarriage, a boy, and how my dad buried the tragic little parcel under the lilac bush at the end of the garden. Small things, big things. So much unsaid. What had we talked about?