As I draw up, my parents are about to leave. It’s eleven and everyone else has. ‘Don’t talk to me Gilbert,’ says Mum, from the cab. Her lips are rigid. ‘Help Charles with the washing-up. The teacups and crystal glasses are not to go in the dishwasher.’ She winds up the window and they drive off.

I walk into the hall and everything returns in an instant of familiarity: the tessellated tiles, the grandfather clock, the pile of unopened junk mail, Clare’s gloves, waiting on the side table for her to slip on. I want to make a new start with Charles, but the first thing I do is lie. ‘The editor called me in for an impromptu meeting at work. He panicked that we hadn’t properly planned our general election coverage.’ Even as I say it out loud, it sounds phoney, and Charles seems to know.

I follow him into the kitchen. ‘I’ll wash, you dry,’ he instructs.

The windows are open to air the house of cigarette smoke. He fills me in on his afternoon. Having discovered the burglary, he had every right to call off the gathering. There is no way I would have gone ahead. But he has an American never-shall-evil-triumph attitude to life. He told the guests it was an important lesson for his boys that life goes on, even if the mourners’ recollections of Clare would be shared over the percussion of a local builder nailing planks of wood across the jemmied back door to make it secure.

Only after guests started to drift away did two officers turn up, one uniformed, one plain-clothes. They complained the crime scene had been contaminated by the builder and by my drinking, weeping relatives and that there was no possibility of obtaining a clean set of fingerprints. Charles apologised but said there was a bigger priority.

‘Then one of the officers told me there was no chance of them finding the thieves in any case. There were just too many break-ins to investigate.’ Charles chuckles sardonically. ‘Can you believe it? He admitted that all they are doing by turning up is rubber-stamping my insurance claim.’

He seems to want to share with me. ‘Do you think any of this will change after the election?’ he asks.

I grunt something about how tackling crime will, as usual, figure in the campaigns, but it always seems to be an argument about how long to lock up criminals rather than actually catching them. ‘If you think the prosecution rate is rubbish for burglary, it’s almost non-existent for corporate and financial crime. Not like in the US.’ I wince at my thoughtlessness. Perhaps he didn’t notice.