So, week after week, I bought the Muswell Courier. I followed a strict routine. I’d make a cup of coffee, get a biscuit, sit down by the window, put on my specs, and—just to increase the suspense—read the entire paper before I looked at the ‘Family Announcements’ page. Sometimes I fooled myself into thinking it was just a game. A lark. A somewhat creepy little experiment to get me out of the house and relieve my loneliness.

But I knew, deep down, it was something more unsettling. Azra dwelled there, deeply buried, but she still had power over me. Searching the Deaths notices kept me close to her. How we would have laughed together! Because it was just the sort of thing that she would do. As I sat in my yellow armchair she was there in the room, feet propped on the table, knocking back the wine. I never thought you had it in you, she’d say, impressed.

More than impressed. Admiring. It was only later that I could admit this.

It wasn’t until mid-October that I found a promising funeral. ‘Yvonne (‘Vronny’) Crawley, beloved wife of Trevor’, had died, aged sixty-five. Funeral at St Luke’s Church, East Finchley.

This time I wasn’t going to be caught out. I’d gone on Facebook and done some homework. Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

Vronny, it turned out, had been an enthusiastic user of social media and had chronicled her family life in detail. Many of her postings depicted holidays in her and Trevor’s trusty camper van. Photos showed picturesque views of the Scottish Highlands, a favourite destination, despite the clouds of insects. ‘Trev says I’m a midge-magnet!’ Trev was a Glaswegian, apparently, and recently retired from his job at British Gas. They had plans to retire to their apartment in Spain.

I sat there, a Peeping Tom, and gazed at photos of Trevor. He looked fun. Wizened, grinning, something of the jockey about him. I suspected early malnutrition. Stripped to his shorts, sinewy and sunburnt, he stood beside a barbecue holding up a sausage. Dapper in a dove-grey suit, he danced with his daughter Tina at her wedding. There seemed to be three children and one grandchild, Chip. ‘The doting granddad’ showed Trevor kicking a football around with little Chip. Several photos showed rough-and-tumble sessions with their Yorkshire terrier—‘that little rascal’—in their garden in Finchley.

All in all, they seemed a boisterous bunch. However, an elegiac air hung over these family snaps. Soon, their high spirits would be snuffed out. Only I, a stranger, knew what was coming, for a few months later Vronny’s postings stopped, for ever.

Of course I felt uncomfortable. But then I thought: it’s Facebook! Anyone can look at Facebook, that’s the point of it. So what’s wrong?

Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just curious, just doing a bit of research. So why was my heart pounding? Why did I jump, when the doorbell rang, and snap my laptop shut?

I’d lost weight, these past months; the little black dress sagged around the middle. In fact, I hadn’t eaten a proper meal for some time. Just bags of peanuts, tubs of three-bean salad, that sort of thing. Washed down with vodka and tonic. Or, when I forgot to go to the shops, just the vodka.