I stepped into the kitchen and glanced around. There wasn’t anyone there. The back door was shut and everything looked the same as it had when I was here last. The coffee cups were still on the drainer and I knew Tom had touched them, had drunk from one of them. I closed my eyes. I’d have to get rid of them. I couldn’t cope with having them there as a reminder.

Quietly, I turned to the adjacent dining room. Its door was open wide. I tried to think back to the last time I’d been here, the day Tom had died, but I couldn’t remember how I’d left it. The room was filled with sunlight, and dust motes hung in the air. The patio windows were tightly shut and I could see from the position of the handles that they were locked. Nobody was there.

I craned my neck to look up the stairs. If someone was in one of the bedrooms, I didn’t want to be up there with them. I listened so hard I thought my eardrums would burst, but couldn’t hear anything at all.

My mind raced as I tried to think why I had thought there was someone here. And then I realized there was a faint smell in the air. The roses that had been in the hallway that day were there still, their petals dry and brown at the edges, their leaves crisp. And nobody had emptied the kitchen bin or washed up the dishes in weeks. When I’d last been here, stunned after Tom had died, I hadn’t thought of clearing out the kitchen. It had been the last thing on my mind.

I breathed a sigh of relief. That was the difference. I just needed to clean the house and open all the windows to let some fresh air in. Soon it would feel like mine again. I opened the living room door then stopped dead in my tracks.

Josh was sitting on the sofa.

•   •   •

Josh! You scared me!” I went over to him and kissed him. “What are you doing here?”

He smiled at me. He was looking relaxed, sprawled out on the sofa, his phone, as usual, firmly clamped in his hand.

“I wanted to see you,” he said. “I didn’t get the chance to talk to you at the funeral.” His eyes were red and I guessed that he had worried about breaking down if we’d spoken.

“It wasn’t the place for a real conversation, was it?” I sat down on the other sofa. “I didn’t realize you had a key.”

Either Tom or I would pick him up and take him home; there’d never been a need for him to have a key here. If he wanted a late night out with one of his friends he would stay over at their house.