It was hard not to feel defeated before she’d even started. She stared around her at the unimaginable chaos, then strode determinedly toward the drawers of the desk from which papers erupted and yanked the deepest one fully open. Plunging her hand into it, she lifted out a heap and placed it on the desk; she scooped out the rest, then plonked herself onto the swivel chair, which spun on its wheels and slid sideways.

“Jesus,” Jude said crossly, and scooted herself back to the desk.

On top of the pile of papers was a shopping list, not in Liam’s handwriting: light bulbs, loo roll, toothpaste, bleach, mousetraps. Jude crumpled it into a ball and chucked it behind her.

Then a violent blue and yellow scribble in wax crayon: Alfie’s art, presumably. She chucked that as well, then felt a bit guilty; after all, Liam had cared about it enough to keep it.

It was quickly clear that Liam had kept everything. Receipts for tools and for nappies; doodles; reminders about paying the gas bill, and then final reminders; a drawing someone had made of the front of the house; scores from some card game; a recipe for tamarind aubergine curry; his NHS card; plans for a kitchen installation; flyers for a concert of folk music; takeaway menus; brochures; deft pencil sketches of things Liam had seen from this desk—garden birds, Alfie sitting next to the bird cage, the tree whose roots were splitting the wall separating the yard from the road. There were Post-it notes, ancient postcards, blobs of Blu Tack, leaking pens, an expired passport that turned out, when she opened it, to belong to Danny.

Randomly shuffled among everything else were those papers that Jude thought might be relevant to her task. Bank statements (she looked at a couple and winced), numerous utility bills, invoices, tax demands. She put these to one side.

In the next, smaller drawer were a stack of unopened envelopes. Jude slid her finger under the flap of one and drew out a final demand for council tax. Another contained the bank’s refusal of a further overdraft. She pushed it back inside the envelope and bundled everything that looked remotely financial into a plastic bag. Michael was going to get more than he had bargained for.

She hadn’t even started on the mess of papers on the floor. She squatted down and picked up a brown A4 envelope. Inside were images from an ultrasound: presumably that grainy little tadpole was Alfie. Jude suddenly felt incredibly sad. She sat back on her heels, surrounded by the debris of a life. Under her left hand was a letter that began, “Dear Mr. Birch, it has come to our attention that you are in arrears . . .” She put it into the bag. She had the nasty stirrings of a headache.