And beneath this thrummed one of our sexual stand-offs. This one had lasted nearly three weeks, something of a record for us. It stemmed from Greg’s birthday. I’d taken him out to dinner. Underneath my dress I’d worn some new underwear—matching lacy bra, knickers and suspender belt. When we came home, however, Greg had stayed downstairs watching Newsnight. Upstairs I’d peeled off my black stockings, removed my underwear and gone to bed in a state of seething resentment. Since then, I’d rebuffed his few attempts at sexual congress and now he was hurt and he didn’t know why because I hadn’t told him, it sounded too peevish. It was peevish. And because I despised myself I was even rattier with him. You get the picture.

I remember that day so well, but I can’t recall what finally unblocked this marital impasse. Maybe it just dissolved away. And much of our marriage was perfectly contented. Never thrilling, never that.

Prisha, however, confided to her many Facebook followers that, ‘We’re still crazy about each other, after all these years. My heart does a little somersault when Andy comes into the room.’ Maybe her photographs actually told the truth.

But Prisha was dead. It was reported on her Facebook page. She’d died in a car crash in Lincolnshire, on the way to collect a grandfather clock. If photos did lie, I’d never learn the truth, because nobody except Gina, Evan’s drunken daughter back in Hendon, had spoken ill of the dead. More to the point, a death triggers multiple reactions, spawned by the multiple personalities of the person who has passed away. I thought of Trev from Finchley, posed outside his camper van with his arm around his wife. How long had he been double-crossing her, sleeping with a woman half her age? Half my age? For a moment, on the dead Vronny’s behalf, I actually felt jealous of Trev’s mistress, so briefly glimpsed in the Kilburn High Road.

There were many, many postings on Facebook of Andy and Prisha. I became so intimate with their lives that I forgot why I was doing this. Prisha was a large—very large—woman who frequently wore a fuchsia-pink trouser suit that did her no favours. She had the steely look of a born businesswoman. Her partner, Andy, was a stocky, fleshy man who enjoyed his drink; in the majority of the photos he was holding a pint. He was a Spurs supporter and, not surprisingly, a dog lover. In fact, with his groomed and shapely white beard he resembled one of his own Schnauzers. I liked the look of his dogs—a breed unfamiliar to me—and I liked the look of him. Third time lucky, I thought. If anyone questioned me, I’d say I’d met Andy and Prisha when I bought one of their puppies.

I know what you’re thinking. That I was a psychopath. A sociopath. Whatever. That I was seriously deranged if I carried on like this. Did I really think I could hit on a man at his own wife’s funeral and get away with it? That we would both, as it were, hit it off? The whole thing was getting beyond a joke. And now I should stop, before anyone got hurt.