When the oven timer goes off, I take the cake out of the oven and slide it onto a cooling rack. I watch the steam curl into the air, as though there might be answers to be found within it. My head feels full of thoughts that I can’t make sense of, and I’m impatient for Daniel Buchs to reply immediately, to tell me what I need to know.

I can’t sit still, so I pick up my phone and stalk through the flat. I go outside and sit on the terrace, but I can’t settle. I wander back into the living room, then my bedroom. I remove my journal from the bedside table drawer and take out the picture of Mum with Evelyne in 1976 – the one Nina pressed into my hand when I left her – searching it for answers it cannot give. Daniel must have taken the photo, Nina said. That’s right. They arrived on the same night, just before the demonstration. What if Daniel does have the answers? Do I actually want to know, after all?

I put the photo back in my journal and leave my room, intending to head back to the kitchen, but as I reach the door to the master bedroom, I hesitate. I can feel its pull, drawing me in. I put my hand on the door handle, feel the cool metal in my hand. I know I’ll be breaking their trust. Violating their privacy. But I also know I’m not going to stop. There’s something magnetic about this room that compels me towards it.

I push the door open, and there it is, this reflection of their perfect lives. There’s the bed where they made their perfect children. The wardrobe containing Julia’s perfect clothes. The photos on the walls, testament to their perfect, untroubled lives. My life was mostly untroubled, before all this. Not perfect, but pretty good. But over the last few years it’s all disintegrated. Mum’s accident. The tests. The failed IVF. The all-consuming grief that Patrick could only handle for so long before seeking light relief with someone else. So standing in this doorway is like looking into a parallel universe, paraded in front of me like a sick gameshow. Here’s what you could have won…