I close the drawer and open the one beneath. This one is much more organised. I sit on the bed and take out a folder and find Léa and Luca’s birth certificates, and then Michel and Julia’s marriage certificate. Julia Sarah Meier and Michel Jean-Pierre Chevalley, married on 24 July 2003 in Montreux’s hôtel de ville. The town hall. Also in the folder is a bunch of handwritten letters and print-outs of emails, some between Michel and Julia, but they’re all in French. One letter is in German. It’s signed with only a large capital A and two kisses. A woman, clearly. And given the classic, neat script, I wonder if it’s an older relative. It’s dated twelve years ago. I flip it over and see it’s addressed from A. Meier in a place called Thun. I wonder what it says, and why Julia’s kept it so long.

Another song comes on the radio, a Britney Spears track from the late nineties that reminds me of university halls, warm beer and sticky dance floors. I should leave the bedroom, go back and ice the cake, shove in those chocolate fingers. I put the papers back in the folder and the folder in the drawer, and as I turn my head my eyes catch some movement in the mirror on the bedside table and I inhale sharply when I see that in the reflection of the doorway is Jorge.

I’m not sure who is more shocked. Heat rushes to my cheeks.

‘What are you doing?’ he says.

‘I’m, er… I just…’

‘Do Julia and Michel know you’re in here looking through their things?’

I shake my head, mumble a no. Oh God. I feel like one of my own students being told off for nicking another kid’s sandwiches, only I know it’s far, far more serious than that. ‘I came in here to… get something and then I…’ My voice trails off as I can’t even think of a good excuse – because there isn’t one. I don’t deserve to be excused. This isn’t me, I want to say.

He’s looking at me with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust. Perhaps he’s mulling it over, debating whether to tell them or not. I know this is my fault, and yet I can’t stop anger flooding my veins, shouting over the shame. Anger at what my life’s become, at my own inability to deal with it, and at him, standing there where he shouldn’t be and judging me.

‘What the hell are you doing here anyway?’ I say. ‘And don’t you know how to knock?’