‘Yesterday … at work … how drunk was Ralph? He rang me in the afternoon and he sounded pissed. Said you’d all been at the staff lunch, that it had gone on longer than intended, and he’d have to stay late to catch up. I teased him. I said, did he mean “catch up” or “sleep off the hangover under his desk”?’

Meredith cored a tomato, seeds spilling onto the chopping board in a gelatinous shiver. ‘He’s always quite pissed after the monthly lunch,’ she replied carefully. ‘I think he might have carried on drinking in his office.’

‘How did he seem, at lunch?’

Meredith shrugged, turning away from Paula to start on a red pepper.

‘Same as usual. He was on a different table so I didn’t talk to him – he was sitting with the Earl and Sebastian and the other bigwigs.’

She remembered Ralph winking across at her, trapped between the Earl and Sebastian, all three of them knocking back the Chianti.

‘I was sitting with Ceri and Mumblin’ Mo. Ralph was still there when I left to go back to my office.’

Which was when Ralph had texted her to ask her to come and see him after work…

Where was his phone, she wondered?

‘How can he just have disappeared?’ wailed Paula.

‘What did the police say?’ Meredith pretended to be engrossed in scraping the brittle white seeds out of the pepper’s heart.

‘Not a lot. Someone came over, about an hour ago. She just took down all the details. They said they won’t make it public for another day, though.’

‘What else did she say?’

‘Nothing very useful. Just “I’m sure he’ll turn up” – that sort of thing. She wanted a photo of him and to know if he had any medical conditions, and so on.’

‘And did he? Does he, I mean?’ Meredith tried to keep the treacherous hope out of her voice, although she wasn’t sure what exactly she was hoping for.

‘Nothing serious. Oh Meredith, do you think he’s left me? I know I moan about our lack of a sex life, but I do love him, you know.’

Meredith put down the knife and went over to Paula, putting her arms around her, trying to keep her juice-stained fingers away from Paula’s crumpled, white linen shirt.

‘He adores you too. He told me so just yesterday.’

About half an hour before he slipped his fingers inside my knickers. She cringed.

‘Did he really?’ Paula hugged her back. ‘Where do you think he is, then? Surely he’d have rung if he could.’

Meredith extracted herself from the embrace. It felt too hypocritical. She hesitated. ‘Like I said, he texted me, mid-afternoon sometime, asking me to pop into his office for a drink after work. That’s what makes me think he kept going, that he was on a bit of bender.’