But I had an overwhelming urge to leave the house. To be somewhere, anywhere other than here. The last few days had been a mass of frustration and heartache. But most of all, I now doubted my husband, the man I had married for better or for worse. I realised I didn’t know him at all.

I pushed the keys into my trouser pocket and headed for the door where I put on the plimsolls I had always kept in the car for when I had to drive and I was wearing heels. I instinctively grabbed Ben’s thick blue winter cardigan which was hanging on a hook by the door and wrapped myself in it.

Forty minutes later I pulled up outside mine and Eve’s flat. I looked up at the windows, which were broken. A thick grey smudge framed each one. I opened the car door and stepped out. There were yellow police banners plastered across the window, some had fallen away at one side and now hung there like discarded party streamers.

I closed the car door and began walking tentatively towards the building that I once lived in with my best friend and husband. As I got closer I could see a figure hovering by the wall, looking at an array of flowers I hadn’t expected to be there. As I got closer I recognised the burly stature.

‘Hi, Daisy.’ Patrick raised his head slightly. He spoke softly and without surprise. He was hunched over a bunch of flowers, reading a small card. He wore a heavy long black coat and as he stood, he pulled it up around his neck. I mirrored his behaviour by pulling the cardigan I had borrowed from Ben tighter around me and the mound of baby inside of me. Patrick motioned towards the flowers. ‘I was just looking at some of the things people had written. She was very popular, our Eve.’

I bent down to a squat. Something that would normally feel comfortable, today felt like hard work. I dropped to my knees.

‘I come here every day. I have done, since last week when it happened. I have a bereavement counsellor, he said it’s called ‘searching’. Common when, you know, someone, goes… suddenly. Like our Eve did. He told me we find ourselves returning to the spot where a person died. Hoping to find something. Hoping to find them. That’s what he told me anyway. I suppose that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?’

‘I… I don’t know. I just came out for a drive and found myself here.’

‘Well, that sounds about right. Are you speaking to anyone? A counsellor?’ Patrick’s tone was so matter of fact, it felt as though we were strangers.

I brushed a piece of hair away from my mouth then picked up a small blue teddy. There was no card attached and I was overcome with wonder as to who would have left it. ‘No, no one. I’ve got no one,’ I said, then realised the true enormity of what I had said. Ben had gone. I knew it when I woke the second time. I had felt the echo of his presence. The words that I had said to him were still ringing in my ears.