I moved to the sent messages, but the emails still didn’t tell me that. They told me he had ordered wood chips for the garden, gray paint for the kitchen, Omega 3 capsules for both of us; also a book on architecture and a new CD by Howling Bells, which I’d never heard of. Maybe he’d given it to someone as a present. Milena? Christine? I called up his music library and scrolled down, and there it innocently was.

I went downstairs. It was still gray outside, and soon enough it would be getting dark again. The lawn was covered with soggy leaves and the pear tree by the back wall dripped steadily. I hadn’t eaten since the Danish pastries that morning, so I made myself a piece of toast and Marmite and a cup of camomile tea and took it back to the computer. The phone rang and it was Gwen, with the number of their solicitor for me to call. I couldn’t remember the one Greg had used when we’d bought the house. Now there was so much to be sorted out. I wrote it on the notepad I found in the desk drawer and said I’d call her the following day.

Junk mail—but I found nothing apart from advertisements for Viagra, fake Rolex watches, amazing investment opportunities, guaranteed loans, unsecured credit and an invitation to the online casino, where everyone is king.

Trash. Greg was pretty efficient at getting rid of old messages and, anyway, they only went back a few weeks: obviously the ones older than these were deleted at an even deeper level, somewhere in the mysterious circuitry of the computer. I plowed doggedly through them, feeling I was getting nowhere and simply wasting my time. There was a strange little message from Tania, in which she said she didn’t really understand his query and he should ask Joe about it.

I got the phone from our bedroom—my bedroom—and called Joe on the office number.

“Yes?” He sounded unusually curt.

“It’s me. Is that the way you usually talk to clients?”

“Ellie.” His voice softened. “It’s one of those days. I was going to call you this evening. Tell me about the inquest. Are you all—”

“Were there any problems with your business?”

“How do you mean?”

I repeated the question, mentioning the email I’d found on Greg’s computer.

“What date did you say?”

“A week or so ago.”

There was a pause.

“I’m scrolling through my mail and there’s nothing I can see from Greg about a worry.”

“So, everything was OK?”

“Depends what you mean. If you want me to bend your ear about clients who don’t pay up on time, don’t give us proper information and then complain, or dealing with the Revenue and the nightmare of bureaucracy . . . But that’s just business as usual and you’ve got problems of your own.”