I need to pull myself together, need to snap out of this fog. I look at my inbox. I should at least attempt to tackle that before I see Anne but then my phone bleeps on the desk. I look down and see a notification from the Dream Properties app. ‘Three new properties waiting for you,’ it reads. I click on the app, feeling a familiar sense of exhilaration rise up inside me. As the images load on the screen I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s been too long.

Amy, the estate agent, is waiting for me on the river path when I arrive. She is young, in her early twenties, with a soft, trusting face, and she rushes towards me as I approach.

‘You must be Imogen,’ she cries, extending a tanned hand with French-polished fingernails. ‘It’s so good to meet you. Shall we go take a look?’

It was so easy I can barely believe it. I made an online booking using the name of my niece. I felt it might be a good omen to take on her persona for a couple of hours, and I was right. I can leave everything behind.

‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to be patient with me as I’m not familiar with this property,’ says Amy, turning to me with a beaming white smile as we head down the drive. ‘It’s my colleague, Jenny, who deals with these kinds of properties but her son’s sick so I had to step in at the last minute. I hope you don’t mind?’

‘Not at all,’ I say, looking up at the ivy-clad, red-brick facade. The house is a waterside pile in Goring, worth in the tens of millions.

‘So this, obviously, is the main entrance,’ says Amy as she juggles the bulky set of keys with one hand while keeping a firm grip on her hot-pink handbag with the other. ‘Right,’ she says, gasping as she unlocks the door. ‘Let’s go and have a look, Imogen.’

The name makes me smile and I feel a burst of energy as we enter the house. The entire entrance hall is filled with bookshelves, rising all the way up to the ceiling.

‘Oh, wow,’ exclaims Amy. ‘Someone likes their books. I’ve never seen so many.’

‘It’s extraordinary,’ I whisper. ‘Like a secret library.’

‘It really is,’ says Amy. ‘But, God, I wouldn’t like the job of dusting them all.’

She laughs and the sound reverberates around the room.

We spend the next ten minutes strolling from room to room with Amy pointing out the stunning views. The living room, which looks out on to the river, is spectacular, with polished wood flooring, plush velvet sofas and tasteful dove-grey painted walls.

‘Right, shall we go and see the kitchen?’ she says, consulting her phone, on which I can see a vast floorplan on the screen. ‘Do you like to cook, Imogen?’