Soon he calls us up one by one for our tributes. Dad, who has lost not only his daughter but his protégée, insisted on delivering the first and longest eulogy. It is mostly an account of Clare’s academic and professional achievements: prizes won, distinctions earned, every job a springboard to the next dizzying height. It is all factual and true, but it is mostly about how she presented herself to the world; it hides what was inside her and what today is inside Dad. He can’t break the habits of a lifetime and go anywhere near his real feelings. I’ve always thought he would explode and then collapse if he ever let his emotions out. The nearest he comes to something meaningful is the family myth – well, family fact – that Clare was better than me at football, and how she once humiliated me in front of my friends by tackling the ball off me on Hampstead Heath and haring the length of the field to score. She teased me about it for years.

Charlie’s face is as grey as ash. He is fluent while battling tears. He may be a buttoned-up preppy boy from Boston, Mass. – Harvard and King’s College, Cambridge – but the gaping wound of Clare’s death is unmissable. He starts by recounting how they met, shortly after university. They’d gone to a soul night organised by a mutual friend. It was the top floor of a Soho strip club, and as both of them arrived early the stripper was still in the middle of her routine, entertaining the middle-aged male customers. They were both so embarrassed, the only thing they could do was talk to each other.

‘I didn’t dare take my eyes off her,’ says Charlie. ‘I had nowhere else to look. By the end, there wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to look.’

He is sweet, and natural. Not what I expected. I’m praying he never ends. I’m hunched over, hands tightly clasped, agonising. It’s my turn next.

When he’s finished, I squeeze out of the pew, past Mum and Dad. The backs of my trouser legs feel as if they are clinging to my thighs and calves and I want to fidget with them. The five paces to the lectern are the most exhausting of my life.