She was getting a wee bit flirtatious now, as I stood there filling in some endless, detailed form about the room. Name, date of birth, residence, favourite colour, make and style of underpants, approximate rate of hair loss, last time you can remember eating tofu, views on the afterlife. I wrote in a fake name: John Mason. Christ, why had I done that: wouldn’t it have been better just to be me, after all – officially, at least – I had nothing to hide. Too late. It would look weird if I scribbled it out now. John Mason, who the hell was he, what kind of name was that? How many more multi-headed questions were going to fly like rogue missiles out of that thin, magenta-smeared slot of a mouth?

‘Och, no, the houses are all full,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a bit of work to do as well, and you know how it is if you try to get anything done in anyone else’s house.’

‘Get a bit of peace here, eh?’

Thank God she hadn’t asked what kind of work I did. What kind of work did some eejit called John Mason do anyway? I had only chosen the name because it sounded solid.

‘Yes, a bit of peace is just what I need.’

My nerves were pretty frayed when I finally hurried upstairs with my bag, and closed the door behind me. I stared for a while at the sickly reproduction of Monet’s water lilies that was hanging on the wall in a blue plastic frame. Poor Monet, I thought, endlessly shrunk and copied into such blandness.

Then I got out the paper and started to write the list of things I needed, beginning with rubber gloves. After a few minutes, I crossed out the word ‘rubber’ twice, and wrote in ‘leather’ instead. I didn’t want to leave any fingerprints for the police to find, but I wasn’t going to kill McGee wearing a pair of yellow Marigolds, as if I had popped in to do the washing-up and then changed my mind and suddenly murdered a man because the water wasn’t hot enough yet to really get the grease off the pans.

Underneath ‘gloves’, I wrote: find out where wedding reception is. I knew she would ask me again. She’d dug up her wee bit of information like a terrier, and she wasn’t going to let up until she’d tugged out some more. Tug, tug. Who was the bride? Was there a decent buffet? I bet she even knew someone who was going to the very wedding I was going to pretend to go to.

Maybe I’d have to murder Marie as well, I thought, and flatten her in the trouser press. I laughed for a bit at that, and I started thinking about how best to destroy the list once I had written everything down and memorised it.