There was one thing I knew I had to do before the funeral. I’d been thinking about it since the inquest, imagining what it looked like, and recently I’d even started dreaming about it—jerking awake from dreams of a deep pit in the middle of London, Greg’s red car hurtling to the bottom, bursting into flames there. Porton Way. I’d wake with images of his face pressed against the windscreen, his mouth open in a scream of terror. Or of his body crushed against Milena’s as flames licked them.

If I’d asked Gwen or Mary, they’d have been eager to accompany me, but this was something I needed to do alone. And so, the day before the funeral when I was supposed to be making final arrangements, I headed east. It wasn’t an area of London I really knew, though it wasn’t far from where we lived (where you live, I corrected myself fiercely; not “we” anymore) and I mistook the route, getting off at Stratford. It took me about twenty-five minutes to walk to Porton Way, nearly getting myself killed as I dashed across the great arterial routes that lead east out of London. The sky, which had been gray when I left that morning, turned an ominous purple-brown; a storm was coming, and occasional raindrops splashed my cheek. A bitter wind was blowing over the London streets, whipping up litter and the last of the autumn leaves, which swirled along the pavement.

The entire area seemed to have been turned into a building site. Giant cranes punctuated the horizon and swathes of land had been turned into rubble and sticky mud, scarred with wide trenches. There were Portakabins behind high fences, men in hard hats driving diggers, temporary lights redirecting traffic.

Porton Way, lying at the bottom of a steep incline, was dismal, abandoned, full of half-smashed warehouses and the remnants of old houses, which had been brought to the ground in a pile of bricks and cement blocks. One house was still standing among the ruins, though its front wall had been ripped away. Even from below, I could still see the wallpaper and the old bathtub. Once people had lived there, I thought, sat in that kitchen.

I consulted the map, tracing the route Greg had driven with a finger. What a drab, dreary, ugly place to come for a tryst. But private. Even now, in the middle of the morning, there was no one around; it looked as though work had been suspended for the time being. As I trudged toward the fatal corner, it started to rain, the skies opening up and releasing an onslaught, water streaming down my cheeks, seeping into my inadequate jacket. The bottoms of my jeans were soon soaking. Water squelched in my shoes. My hair lashed wetly against my face. I could barely see where I was going.