His voice seemed to be far off in the distance, not coming from right beside her. She assumed he was speaking with Brian, but she couldn’t make out the words he was saying – it was as if he was talking with cotton wool in his mouth, the words muffled and incoherent. Louisa felt as though she’d been sat on the driveway for hours. Time had stood still.

Once the officer had stopped talking, he handed the mobile back to her. She took it from him and asked about what would happen next. The coroner’s officers were at the scene, he said, and Tiff would be taken to the hospital morgue to await a post-mortem. Once the police had carried out their investigations and the coroner his, if the cause of death was confirmed as accidental, the death would be registered. Although the officer’s words mingled in Louisa’s head, she did get the impression his initial considerations of the scene, together with Louisa’s statement and the paramedic’s observations, hadn’t indicated that Tiff’s death was suspicious. However, they couldn’t know for sure yet.

‘Lou!’ Brian’s voice penetrated her bubble. ‘Darling, are you okay?’ She felt his hands on her shoulders, then his arms were around her, pulling her upwards.

‘Tiff’s dead.’

‘I know, I know. I can’t believe it; the police told me on the phone. Where’s the baby?’

Louisa turned and pointed to the side of Tiff’s Audi where Noah’s pram had been parked since she’d called the ambulance. Brian steadied her against the fence, then left her side and she watched as he wheeled Noah’s pram out of the open gate. A few moments later he came back for Louisa. A few words were exchanged between him and the police officer, then she was inside the warm car, her teeth chattering together noisily.

‘We need to warm you up.’ Brian drove past the church and then took the left-hand fork in the road to go down through the middle of the village. For a Saturday it was remarkably quiet. There hadn’t even been a gathering outside Tiff’s house, and given that there were police cars, crime scene tape and an ambulance, Louisa was surprised. But even if there’d been a crowd gawping, she wouldn’t have been aware of it.

All she was aware of at this moment was that she’d let her best friend down. Not only that, but she’d allowed her to die before she’d apologised.

Something else she was now going to have to live with.