“Hello, Marie. What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

“Sorry about the false name. Clearly, I’m not Samantha Brown. Shall I take a seat?”

“Please do.”

He sits back down behind his desk and I sit on a plastic chair opposite.

“Look, if this is about me and Camilla, please save your breath. We’re not doing anyone any harm. I’m guessing it was you who sent Stuart round to Camilla’s the morning after your night visit under some rubbish guise to talk to her?”

“No.”

Unsettling news to me.

“Camilla put him in his place. He would have received a slap on the face, too, if I hadn’t been there to stop her. She’s a fiery one.”

“That all sounds very over-the-top but who you sleep with is none of my business, I agree. This is about Nina. You were her friend. I need to know if she confided in you about her fears that someone was following her.”

I fold my arms in an attempt to look as though I mean business. My heart thuds. I feel stupid. The baby kicks. I feel like we’re acting in a TV advertisement for a loan company or some kind of insurance.

“No.”

To be fair, he looks genuinely quite baffled. I half expect him to scratch his head.

“Did she ever seem scared or distracted?” I ask.

“Not particularly.”

“But there was something?” I push.

“It was something very general, unrelated to you or her children, and confidential. You were her friend, too, so you’ll respect her privacy,” he says. “No matter how well you think you know someone, no one can know everything about everyone all the time. Some of the things I see and experience, they could potentially make me doubt everyone I know, if I chose to let it happen.”

I stay silent, pondering my next move. I try, without making it obvious, to study the room, wondering where he keeps his client records. They must be digital or kept at his house because there’s no obvious filing cabinet with the key conveniently left in.

“As a friend, I really need to know exactly what you found. I recently discovered that Nina was looking for someone’s relatives and I feel compelled by grief to continue her search,” I say.

“I can’t tell you anything, especially as I didn’t find out that much. It happens occasionally, even in this day and age. Besides, it’s too late now. Initially, I assumed that she was looking for people to inform them of her situation. I couldn’t make it happen, otherwise they’d have been at her funeral.”

I redden. Greg attended the funeral. He must remember what a fool I made of myself.

Nina had tried to dissuade me from making a speech. “I don’t want too much overemotion,” she said. “It will add to the upset.”

I didn’t reply. How could I ever add to the upset, the raw devastation?

As I made my way to the pulpit, I swallowed hard and took a few seconds checking that the microphone was at the right level to buy enough time to try to regain full composure. As I opened my mouth to speak, I felt a sense of knowing exactly what the right thing was to do. It was a pivotal moment, an opportunity to make true my promises to Nina, to myself, to Felix, to Emily.