His office was little more than a cupboard. A cheap desk and chair, a bookshelf with boring publications on it, health service regulations and copies of Sage operating manuals. There were no pictures, no sign he had been married or had any kind of life. The receptionist left me, and I sat down in the chair, imagining Patrick in this place, sitting for years at this desk. Not saving lives as I had thought, but filing expense claims and inputting data to spreadsheets.

I opened the drawers of the desk, apprehensive. In the top one were some paperclips, two used-up biros, and a coiled-up blue silk tie, left there as if for meetings. I remembered buying it two Christmases ago – it had cost £100, and here it lay in this dusty drawer in a dingy NHS back office. I took it out, running the silky material through my fingers. A tiny piece of him, left behind.

The second drawer had a bottle of whisky, almost drunk, and another of aftershave. An expensive custom-blended one. A toothbrush in an opened packet, shower gel. I didn’t want to think about why he had all these grooming items in his office. I remembered how he would shower every night when he came in, almost compulsively. Washing off the smell of Suzi, perhaps. But she’d told me they only met in May. This behaviour of Patrick’s, the lateness, the sneaking around, had been going on as long as I’d known him.

I put that thought aside and tried the third drawer. It was locked. For a moment I thought about going down the legitimate route, asking if anyone from maintenance had a spare key. But I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, and from my experience of hospitals, it would likely take hours. Luckily, I had retained a few skills from my time in Uplands, where picking a flimsy desk lock would have been child’s play to the semi-feral girls I lived with for six months. I straightened out one of the paper clips from the top drawer, and within two minutes I had the lock open.

All that was inside was a notebook, a cheap lined thing. In it were names, in my husband’s neat print writing. I recognised Conway’s. Beside them were numbers, dates, scrawled facts. Things like With girl in conference bar. Three-hour lunch break for two. Expensed for extra hotel night. What did it mean?