My phone was on my desk where I left it and there were no messages or missed calls. I put my feet up on the desk and took a deep bite into my Battenberg. It’s so sweet it makes my teeth sting. I thought about Brendan again and remembered that he had asked me if he could pick up his bundle of important documents from work. They were kept in a secure deed box under the bookshelves in my office, so I took them out to check the contents so I could write to his next of kin and inform them of their existence.

The envelope contained a land registry title deed for his home, a simple one-page will leaving all his worldly goods to his ex-wife, and a couple of pension portfolios. Nothing of note. I’m sad at the sight of his name in print and briefly recall him sitting opposite me with his feet up on my desk displaying a pair of socks with chimps’ feet emblazoned on them. I put the documents back in the deed box, pick up my half-empty coffee cup and head out of the office to commence my search for Satsuma. The Grange estate where she said she lived is only half a mile or so away, but I drive there in my car and am soon parked up and commencing my ‘nose about’. It’s a 1950s brick-built London County Council estate. There are eight separate ‘U’-shaped five-storey blocks and several small roads with parking that wind themselves around the buildings. Each block has a central stairway with walkways leading to the front doors of every floor.

From where I was parked I had a decent view of the fronts of two of the blocks. One is called ‘Vaseley House’, the majority of its front doors painted pillar-box red, and the other ‘Drummond House’, which has mostly pale blue front doors. The walkways are dark brown brick with white-painted copingstones on top. A few front doors are painted in different colours, and I assume these are the flats that have been purchased by the tenants from the council under the Right-to-Buy scheme. If I had purchased one of these flats, I would have kept the door colour the same. I felt a tiny frisson of excitement at my situation that faded as the minutes passed.