At eight o’clock I made myself a bowl of porridge—half milk, half water, with golden sugar sprinkled liberally over the top—and a large pot of strong coffee. Then I washed and got dressed in an ancient corduroy skirt that came down to my ankles and a dark blue jersey with a hole in the elbow that Greg had given me when we first met. Because it was cold and gray, I put on a duffel coat, and wrapped a red scarf around my neck. Now I was a bundle of wool and itchy layers.

Kentish Town Road was thick with cars and people on their way to work. I got on to the overcrowded Underground train that took me to Euston, then walked the last few hundred yards to Greg’s workplace. It was on the second floor of a recently renovated office block. They had moved in there a few months earlier; when their firm had expanded they had needed more than three desks, three computers and several filing cabinets. Once it had just been Joe and Greg, now there were people I didn’t recognize. They needed rooms with doors for clients, lavatories, a coffee-machine and a watercooler. I rang the bell and before long Tania was ushering me in, taking my coat and scarf, pulling out a chair for me, too solicitously offering tea, coffee, biscuits, anything at all, gazing at me with her big brown eyes, shaking her head in horror and sympathy so that her ponytail bounced. She was like a puppy, an eager spaniel trying to please.

“Is Joe here?”

“He’s in his office. I’ll go and fetch him.”

At that moment Joe came striding across the room toward me, holding his arms out well before he reached me, and Tania seemed to melt away. “You should have told me you were coming,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “You look absolutely exhausted.”

“I’ve been up all night. I was looking through Greg’s stuff.”

“Sorting things out?”

“Trying to find out what he’d been up to.”

“Here, come and tell me.” He took my arm and led me into his office, which was really no more than a small glass cubicle. On the white wall behind his chaotic desk hung a photograph of his family: his wife, Alison, and his three children, who were teenagers now but in the picture were still small and childish. Alison stood behind them, her arms circling the little group protectively. I saw how the three children were a bit like her and a bit like him, and felt fierce regret and sadness fill me from top to toe.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said, as I sat in the chair he pulled out for me. “There wasn’t anything strange.”

Joe’s brow wrinkled. “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. That was why I was looking. I need to go through his things here as well.”