‘Well, just like she lies to everyone, she obviously lied to him,’ said Cat. ‘She must have had the funeral pretty quick. Where’s Joan?’

Joan had disappeared from her side.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, where is she?’ Cat began to creep away towards the drive. ‘Let’s get out of this garden. At least we can do a runner on the drive if we get caught. My heels keep sinking into the grass. Joan! Joan, where are you?’ she hissed.

There was no reply.

‘You know the house, Mary Kate – where will she be?’

Mary Kate looked around her; she had no idea. ‘Well, the back door leads into the kitchen, the front door will be fastened on the snip, and there’s the side door, to the washroom.’

The two women looked at each other.

‘Where’s that?’ said Cat.

Mary Kate didn’t answer but headed off into the darkness around the side of the cypress tree, with Cat following close behind. They both gasped at the sight of the washroom door standing wide open, but there was no sign of Joan.

Joan knew every step on every stair and every floorboard that creaked. She glanced towards the kitchen. The radio was on and she heard the giggles of Lavinia Marcus and the deep, rumbling laughter of a man. It made her blood boil. Glasses chinked and there was the loud glug of liquid being poured out of a bottle; these were sounds all too familiar to Joan from when Lavinia had lived there and would take full advantage of Dr Marcus being out at his surgery until late.

If the angel sitting on her shoulder hadn’t restrained her, she would have marched into the kitchen and given Lavinia Marcus a piece of her mind. Instead, Joan took a deep breath, entirely unaware of where her courage had sprung from. But she was on familiar ground, in the house she had lived in for twice as long as Mary Kate.

She had felt at the bottom of the pile in all of the grieving for the man whose washing she had done and meals she had prepared. She’d never got a word of thanks from Lavinia Marcus, but he had always popped his head into the kitchen of a night. ‘That was delicious, Joan, thank you. Have you heard from your mother this week?’ He always had time for her, the housemaid from Ireland, and she wanted to prove that she had loved him too, her lovely Dr Marcus who would sometimes sit in the kitchen with her while she fed the boys.

He always spoke to her as though she were a proper grown-up, someone who had opinions and knew things, and he was genuinely interested in what she had to say. No one else in her life had ever treated her like that, and that was why she was doing this. For him; to say thank you.

I need to get back out as quick as I can, she thought, and began her ascent of the stairs.