THE INQUEST WAS set for ten o’clock on Tuesday, October 15, in the coroner’s court off Hackney Road. I was to attend and, if I wanted, I could ask questions of the witnesses. I could bring family and friends if I wished. It was open to the public and to the press. After the inquest, Greg’s death could be registered, I could collect the appropriate forms, E and F, and could set a date for the funeral.

I asked Gwen if she and Mary would come with me. “Unless it’s difficult for Mary to arrange childcare,” I added. Mary had a young son, nearly a year old now. Until Greg’s death, the conversations between us had been dominated by nappies, first smiles, teething problems, cracked nipples, the swamping pleasures of maternity.

“Of course we’ll come,” said Gwen. “I’m going to cook you something.”

“I’m not hungry and I’m not an invalid. Does everyone think she was another woman?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What do you think?”

What did I think? I thought I couldn’t survive without him, I thought he had abandoned me, I thought he had betrayed me. I knew, of course, that he hadn’t. I thought when I woke up at night that I could hear him breathing in the bed beside me, I thought a hundred times a day of things I needed to say to him, I thought I could no longer remember his face and then it returned to me, teasing and affectionate, or scorched into its death mask. I thought he should never have left me and it was his fault because he had chosen to go with her, and I thought, too, that I would go mad with not knowing who the woman was and yet if I discovered I should very likely go mad as well. Mad with sorrow, anger, or jealousy.

“I’VE HEARD HE was having an affair.”

My sister Maria’s voice sounded solemnly sympathetic. I could hear her baby crying in the background.

“You’ve got to go.” I banged the phone back into its holster.

An affair. Like death, affairs happen to other people, not me and Greg. Milena Livingstone. How old was she? What did she look like? All I knew about her was that she had a husband who had identified her body at the same morgue as Greg was in. Perhaps she’d been lying in the drawer above him. In death as in life. I shivered violently, feeling nauseous, then went upstairs to my laptop and turned it on, then Googled her name. There aren’t many Milena Livingstones around.