The pain in her head had confined itself to an occasional stretch of its claws. Sometimes an attack could last for days and days, and she would lie in bed in the mornings, still half-asleep, braced for the first strike, but there was silence, and for that she was grateful.

She slid her key into the lock. French had invited her for a pint, but the idea of listening to him drone on about Mac’s failings was even less appetizing than the prospect of an evening alone.

That’s not to say she hadn’t been briefly tempted. Time to think was the opposite of what she wanted. And she had clocked the sideways glances from some of her colleagues, could read their unspoken questions. Why is she at work? Why isn’t she crying? Do you think they were splitting up before he died? It’s only been a day. She can’t possibly have loved him that much.

But she had loved him. All of him. The part of him that forgot her birthday and left his trousers on the floor and had to have the last word just as much as the part of him that made sure she ate and laughed at her jokes and listened and always, always smiled when he saw her.

She wasn’t one for crying, that was all.

Emotion did not fill her up; it drained her until she was as empty and dry as the mud-cracked streams and gullies struggling in this unending heat.

Upstairs, she rummaged through the dirty clothes hamper until she found one of his old T-shirts. It was crumpled and sweat-stained and beautiful.

She climbed into bed on his side. His pillow smelled of the aftershave he had worn for as long as she had known him. She buried her face in it, breathing him in.

Loneliness, the heaviest weight of them all, pressed down on her. Wildeve closed her eyes, imagined herself walking through the dark spaces of her grief, looking for a pinprick of light in the distance. Her body was shaking, dozens of tiny tremors that she could not control.

Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Half an hour.

Dry-eyed, she eventually propped herself up, leaning into his pillow. A glass of stale water was on his nightstand. A photograph of their summer holiday in Sardinia. A well-thumbed thriller by his favorite writer.

He was never coming home.

Another stone settled on the pile in her stomach.

Where were you, Adam? Who did this to you? I wish you were with me now. I wish you could talk to me.

The ceiling light flickered in her bedroom and was followed by the thud of something heavy falling.