“I don’t have a car,” I said. The fact hung in the air between us. I didn’t have a car because Greg had died in it. With someone else.

“You’re looking well,” said Kitty, unenthusiastically, as the car drew away from the curb and joined the queue nosing out on to the main road.

“Thanks.” I knew I wasn’t. “You too, Kitty. How have you been?”

She turned in her seat and gave me her plaintive smile. “I’ve got a bit of a sniffle this morning. I think I’m coming down with a cold.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But I meant since Greg’s death.”

“Oh,” she said, flummoxed. Paul coughed. Clearly Greg’s death was a taboo subject.

“It’s been hard,” said Kitty. “Very hard. Especially with—” She stopped dead. Her eyes filled with tears and she started fiddling nervously with her hair.

“With him dying with another woman?” I suggested.

Paul coughed again, then said, “Here we are. Our humble abode.”

The house was scrupulously tidy and filled with objects Paul and Kitty had collected over the years: the teddy bears on the sofa, the thimbles in the glass cabinet, the snow domes ranged along the mantel, the glass cats on top of the piano that nobody had played since Greg had left home at eighteen. There were photos on the windowsill, and while Kitty went off to get lunch for us, I examined them. “Where have all the photos of Greg gone?” I asked Paul.

He gave his short cough. “We thought you might like them. I’ve put them in a bag for you to take, with things like his school reports.”

“But don’t you want them? I mean, now more than ever, I would have thought—”

“This has been painful for his mother,” he interrupted me. “The photographs upset her.”

Kitty called from the kitchen, announcing lunch. As we sat down to eat, I made myself say what I had come to say. It came out sounding too much like a prepared speech. “One of the reasons I’m here is that I wanted to give you some things of Greg’s as keepsakes, Ian, Simon and Kate as well as you two. Just books, mostly ones I thought you might like. There are photos too. But if you don’t want them . . .”

“Well,” said Paul. He blinked at me. “We can have a look at least.”

“I brought you his one and only tie.”

“Paul’s very particular about his ties,” said Kitty. “Nothing fancy.”

“I just thought it would be a memento.”