Jude felt uncomfortable. She didn’t know if it was the executor’s job to tell people the contents of a will; it was supposed to be lawyers who did that, solemnly, in the presence of the family, in an oak-paneled room, and everything wrapped around in antiquated words that protected people from the hurting truth. This person is dead; this is who they loved the most.

Irina was humming softly to herself.

“Why don’t you ask Danny?” said Jude.

Irina spun herself in another circle, put out her foot to bring herself to a halt.

“That’s not as easy as it sounds. Not easy at all. Can I have your slice of banana bread?”

“Of course.”

“Wheels within wheels,” said Irina.

Jude’s head throbbed. She’d left her pills back at the flat. She heard a child’s voice outside and saw Alfie in the yard. He tottered toward the small bed and then tripped and fell. Jude waited for an adult to appear and lift him to his feet, but no one came and after a while he pulled himself up again and stood swaying on his unsteady legs.

“So I’m supposed to be finding out about Liam’s financial affairs,” she said. “But it’s not easy.” She gestured round the room.

“His financial affairs,” said Irina, exaggeratedly raising her thin brows. “I can’t help you with them.”

What had Danny said to her the first time they’d met? He was having an affair with someone, even if it wasn’t you. Jude looked at Irina in her yellow jumpsuit, her long legs crossed at the ankle; she was like a gorgeous flamingo.

“I can tell you that he did make you a bequest though,” she said.

“A bequest?”

“It just means—”

“I know what a bequest means. I clear people’s houses for a living, and most of them are dead people. Dead people with too much stuff that nobody wants. Except me, sometimes. I see beauty where other people see dross. So what is this bequest?”

“His guitar.”

Irina’s face fell.

“Really? Why would I want a guitar? I don’t play the guitar and I’m not particularly keen to learn. He should have given that to Doc, except I bet he didn’t give Doc and Erika a single thing.”

No, thought Jude. He didn’t.

“I wish he’d left me something that had real emotional value,” said Irina. “I thought he’d do that. Like the chain he often wore. I would never take it off. Next to my skin.” She touched the sharp bones of her clavicle with her long fingers.

“That’s for his mother,” said Jude, acutely uncomfortable. She thought of the wishbone on its leather thong that she had taken from Liam’s bag.

“Or the gorgeous wooden bowl he spent such a time carving.”

“I’m afraid that’s going to someone else as well.”