Just before ten, the door opened again and a group of three entered and were directed by the coroner’s officer to the front-row chairs a few places along from where we sat. A middle-aged man with corrugated graying hair and a silk tie, a slender young woman, whose pale hair rippled down her back and whose aquiline nose quivered, and a young man with untidy dark hair, untied shoelaces and a stud in his nose. I tensed and clutched Gwen’s arm.

“That’s them,” I hissed.

“Who?”

“Her family.”

I stared at the man. After a few seconds he turned and met my gaze. Again I felt it was like a wedding: the bride and bridegroom’s families finding themselves in the same room, curious and suspicious. Someone near him murmured something and he turned around. It was his name. Hugo. Hugo Livingstone. The proceedings were late getting under way because the woman couldn’t get her tape recorder to function. She pushed switches up and down and even banged it with her hand but nothing worked. A couple of men behind me got up and joined her. In the end, they just pushed the plug into another electrical socket and its lights came on. The woman put on some earphones and sat down behind the machine, which almost hid her from view. The court officer asked us all to rise. I had expected a judge in robes and a wig but Dr. Gerald Sams was just a man in a suit, carrying a large bundle of files. He sat down behind the table at the front and began to address us in a calm, deliberate tone. He offered his condolences to me and to Milena Livingstone’s husband and two children. “Stepchildren,” muttered one loudly.

He gave a brief talk about the process. He said there might be some details that family members would find upsetting, but that the inquest was often helpful to the next of kin, giving a clear account of what had happened and perhaps some sort of closure. He would call witnesses, but this was not a trial. Any interested person could question them and, indeed, ask questions at any point. He also said that he had read through the preliminary material, it seemed to be a straightforward case and we would get through it quickly. He asked if anybody had legal representation. Nobody spoke.