I inched my head further round to find a baby in a car seat. I didn’t know a lot about babies, but from what I could make out of this one, face poking out from the giant orange ski-suit thing she was engulfed in, she was too small to walk, or talk. Her eyes closed as she took a deep breath and let out another wail, scrunching her tiny face up and waving stubby arms, hands hidden in the sleeves of the suit.

Without taking his eyes off the road, the man flicked a button, the pulsing tones of hardcore dance music filling the car.

‘Really?’ I couldn’t help asking. Even I knew this was not standard lullaby fare. But within a matter of seconds, the baby had stopped crying, stuffed a suit cuff in her mouth and now stared at me with giant hazel eyes, as solemn and unnerving as her dad’s.

And while the frenetic music pounded at my headache, I felt a prickle of excitement at the choice of tune. This was one of Charlie’s favourites. A coincidence – or a sign?

I was about to find out. Before the first song had come to an end we had turned off the road and bumped our way down an unpaved track up to Damson Farm. I rested my head against the back of the seat and blew out a long sigh. The dashboard display told me it was 8.17 a.m. The odds were a three-way split that Charlie would either still be in bed, still be up from the night before, or be up and dressed and on her way out the door to catch a helicopter. Either way, I really hoped she’d be in. I was in desperate need of a bathroom, a cup of tea and somewhere I could rest my battered bones.

To my surprise, my rescuer not only got out of the Jeep, but unclipped the baby from her seat and walked with me towards the main house. The farmhouse was not quite how Charlie had described it. She’d told me stories of a place bursting with life and colour, chickens pecking about, semi-wild cats slinking round every corner and dogs greeting visitors with a wagging tail. This place felt deserted. Like a ghost farm. Faded, chipped paintwork on the door and shuttered windows. A dead clematis hanging off a rotting trellis beside the front door. The weather didn’t help, admittedly, gloomy skies reflecting off the grey puddles pooling in the gravel yard, but there was nothing else. Not a pot plant or a hanging basket. Not a bird singing in the distance or a string of lights left over from Christmas. Just quite a few straggly weeds.

This did not look like the kind of place my best friend would live. For the first time, I felt a stab of anxiety that maybe she wouldn’t be here.

But I shook that off, even as I limped across, concentrating so my trainers didn’t slip on the wet slabs that formed a square in front of the door. Damson Farm had belonged to Charlie’s family for generations. She belonged to the farm. If she’d moved on, she’d have told me. She always had before. But the tweak of hesitation was enough to allow the man to stride past me, open the door and step right in. After a moment dithering, my bladder compelled me to follow him, moving through a hallway and finding myself in the kitchen that Charlie had told me about so many times. Again, the picture she’d created of hustle and bustle, baking and cooking, the Aga always warm, the kettle always steaming, was a million miles away from this cluttered, soulless, decidedly grubby and sad-looking room.