He looked wretched. ‘Elle, dear . . . your husband had full control over all the accounts too.’ Then, she finally understood.

Carefully, she said, ‘What was it spent on?’

He fumbled pages out in front of her, seeming grateful for the support of something concrete. She glanced over the tiny figures, crawling like ants. Holidays. The Jaguar, replaced every two years. Haircuts, clothes, massages. Meals out that she knew nothing about, bars, even hotel stays. He’d been spending money on her, perhaps. The woman. Elle’s money. ‘But . . . I don’t understand. He was a doctor, he earned a lot.’ That was her last straw to cling to. Even though he clearly spent more than she knew, much much more, he must have had his own money coming in too. She’d seen his payslips, though it had been for less than she thought. Maybe he got paid in different instalments, or it was weekly instead of monthly?

The lawyer hesitated. ‘I contacted his workplace, to ask about final pensions and so on. Elle – he did work at Surrey General, yes, but he wasn’t a doctor. I’m afraid, my dear, you have been rather . . . misled.’

Suzi

Suzi

‘No one’s here then?’ Of course not, the agent would have knocked otherwise. The house was empty, walls trailing TV and internet cables. My voice echoed in the void.

‘It’s been vacated already, yes. Ready to move in, and there’s no chain obviously.’

‘Great, great.’ Pretending to care about the boiler and car parking, I moved around your house. I was inside your house. Of course, you weren’t here any more, but you had been. You had maybe stood by the patio doors on the phone, looking out on the garden. That was painfully neat, trees and grass clipped into right angles, so your wife must have left quite recently. I moved into the kitchen, which was large, with a marbled island. The same floor tiles Nick and I had looked at, from Baked Earth. I opened a cupboard, spotted a stray grain of dry rice in the corner. I wanted to take it with me, if I could have done it without looking crazy. Upstairs, three bedrooms with cream carpet, streaming with light. ‘Did they have any kids, the owners?’ I asked innocently. ‘Just wondering about those stairs.’ You could have lied to me about that too. Perhaps you had several children, half-siblings to my baby. I would have believed anything at this point.

‘No, they didn’t. Just a couple on their own.’ She didn’t mention the accident, or your death. Perhaps she thought it would put me off.

I probed a little. ‘Any reason for the sale? You know, just wondering about neighbours, or any issues.’