Ted doesn’t often show excitement or happiness or any other emotion apart from grumpiness. Unless he’s had a few beers, when his humour shows through like a slice of sunlight beneath a grey cloud. Most of the time he wears a harassed expression and, when he’s not smoking or drinking coffee, he frantically chews gum, his jaw going nineteen to the dozen. But now his small blue eyes shine with rare delight, as though he’s a pitbull about to be given a slab of raw meat.

‘I was about to look on the electoral roll – see if she still lives with Leo or Margot.’

‘Don’t worry about that now. Even if it isn’t the Heather you knew, you still need to be there. Interview whoever she was living with. Describe where she shot herself for colour. You know the drill.’

I do indeed. I could do it in my sleep. Yet before, when I worked in London, I never knew the people involved. Now, if it’s my old friend Heather … I shake my head, not allowing my thoughts to go there. I have to treat it as any other job.

I stand up and pull my sheepskin coat from the back of the chair. It’s heavy and warm (it’s always so cold in here – the heating rarely works properly) and I wrap it around myself gratefully. I got it in the charity shop on Park Street, where I buy most of my clothes, and it’s the colour of toffee with a shaggy cream collar and cuffs. Jack’s still on the phone so I scrawl a quick note, saying I’ll meet him outside.

‘Nice coat, Jess,’ calls our receptionist, Sue, as I scurry past, shoving my notebook into my bag. She’s in her late fifties with a crop of silver hair and twinkly eyes that crinkle when she laughs. She’s like a lovely cuddly aunt who always refers to me as ‘a girl’, asking me about my life and my boyfriend, as though living vicariously through ‘my youth’ even though, at thirty-one, I’m not particularly young. Some days I feel very, very old. And very, very jaded. Like today.

‘Thanks,’ I call back, taking the cigarettes from my pocket as I head out of the reception area. ‘Got it for a bargain in BS8.’

‘And I’m liking the new fringe,’ she adds. I touch it self-consciously, although I know it frames my face, softens my blunt bob, and the platinum blonde contrasts with my chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Very Debbie Harry.’

I laugh off her compliment – although I’m secretly delighted – promising to bring her back a coffee (the machine stuff in the office tastes of plastic), then shoulder my way through the door, down the stairs and onto Park Street.