‘Thanks for coming,’ Paula managed eventually, pouring Meredith a huge glass of wine without asking. She looked terrible, grey as putty, dark circles under her eyes and a blotchy complexion. Meredith wanted to hug her but felt too guilty, so she merely nodded and held out her hand for the wine.

It was stiflingly hot in there, despite a fan listlessly rotating on the kitchen island.

‘What’s all this?’ Meredith gestured towards the mess on the counter, then moved the ukulele so she could sit down.

Paula gave a strangled hysterical bark of laughter. ‘I can’t settle to anything,’ she said. ‘I keep starting things and not finishing them. I was going to make gazpacho. Then I thought I’d clean the spoons. Then I remembered I’d started knitting a fledgling for my niece. And I need to practise the ukulele.’

‘Knitting a fledgling?’

Meredith wasn’t really surprised, though. Paula’s house was littered with the corpses of half-finished craft projects and the evidence of short-lived hobbies. Ralph had frequently complained about it at work.

Paula ran her hand through her usually sleek black straight hair, making it even more dishevelled. ‘My sister’s been rearing this baby bird. Put photos of it all over Facebook, but it died and she was so upset. So I thought I’d knit her one, you know, to sympathise.’

‘Mmm,’ Meredith said, tempted to add, ‘…as you do,’ but it seemed insensitive under the circumstances. ‘Tell you what, let me finish chopping the tomatoes. You sit down for a minute and talk to me.’

She gestured towards one of the stools at the breakfast bar and Paula obeyed, pouring herself an even bigger glass of wine first, half of which she gulped straight down.

‘Have you eaten?’

Paula shook her head.

‘Don’t go crazy on the wine…’

Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘Why? In case it looks bad that I’m pissed when the police show up to tell me my husband’s dead?’

‘Oh Paul, don’t think the worst, please. It’s not even twenty-four hours yet. Let me make this gazpacho and we’ll have some. I haven’t eaten either.’

Meredith had to stop chopping to rub her throat, to try and ease the constriction in it. You didn’t shag your friends’ husbands. How could she have done it?

‘Can I ask you something?’ Paula wasn’t looking at her, but at her glass, running her thumb frantically up and down its stem.

Oh shit, please don’t, Meredith thought. She had a flashback of Ralph’s buttocks in the low mirror of the disabled loo, clenching and thrusting, her leg wrapped around his thigh. ‘Of course.’