‘I walk down the short cut, cross the little bridge and pass the cemetery. I feel as if I’m in a different reality, like a ghost, indomitable. I walk down Ness’s street and slow down as I approach her house. I stand outside looking in. She has a tree in the window, flashing tasteful white lights, delicate baubles – Evie has probably decorated it. It feels strange to be here where absolutely nothing has changed except me. There’s a light on in the kitchen at the back but I know no one is in – she always leaves it that way if she’s going out. I keep staring at the house, the bright yellow front door behind which lie so many of my memories: happy times of bringing up our children, playing games, all of us watching Saturday night TV, the kids enacting their tangos or their waltzes, the adults marking out of ten, the kids racing around the house, the adults sitting round the table drinking wine and putting the world to rights, back to the days of Leah dishing the dirt on the entertainment business, New Year’s Eves, birthdays, kids’ parties, adult parties . . . happy days indeed. And now here it is, the same bricks and mortar, but all broken and riddled with invisible cracks. I slowly walk around the side of the house to the back.

‘Nobody’s in the kitchen. I take the back door key from under the flowerpot where she always leaves it. I open the French windows and let myself in, closing the doors behind me. The smell is as familiar as my own house; hers is fruity and sweet, silent save for the buzzing of the fridge. Ness is messier than me; there’s washing-up in the sink and kids’ work all over the table, a pile of dirty clothes in the laundry basket, clean clothes hanging up everywhere, over radiators and off the backs of chairs.

‘I step in, taking off my wet clothes and putting some of her dry ones on. I feel much better now. I go to the fridge and notice a photo on the door of us all at the school ball, laughing, oblivious to the misfortunes that lie ahead. I take it off to see it better but it makes me nostalgic, homesick for something that’s long gone. It actually hurts to look at it. So I open the kitchen drawer, pull out her big scissors and snip straight through her head between the eyes, and straight through his between his lips, and I feel the pain subside. The pieces fall to the floor.