The hearse arrived, the back door opened and the wicker coffin was exposed. Mr. Collingwood always referred to it as a casket, as if that was more respectful of the dead. It wasn’t lifted by pallbearers, but trundled into the chapel on a silly little trolley that looked as if it should be moving packing cases into a supermarket. It rattled clumsily over the cracks between the paving stones. Mr. Collingwood had warned me about it in advance, saying it had been forced on them by their insurers. There had been reports of serious back injury.

A middle-aged woman, who must have been a relative of Greg’s, asked if we should follow it in.

“They’re going to get it in position,” I said. “I’m not sure if the group before us has finished.” It was as if we’d booked a tennis court. Greg’s relative, if that was who she was, stayed next to me. I felt no need to try any small talk.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

I still hadn’t worked out what to say when people said how sorry they were. “Thank you” didn’t seem quite right. Sometimes I’d mumbled something meaningless. This time I just nodded.

“It must be so terrible for you,” she said.

“Well, of course,” I said. “It was such a shock.”

Still she didn’t go away. “I mean,” she said, “the circumstances were so awkward. It must be so . . . well, you know . . . for you.”

And then I thought, Oh, right, I understand. Suddenly I felt bloody-minded. “What do you mean?”

But she was tougher than I was. She wouldn’t be diverted. “I mean the circumstances,” she said. “The person he died with. It must be so upsetting.”

I felt as if I had an open wound and this woman had put her finger into it and was probing to see whether I would cry out or scream. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I didn’t want to give her anything.

“I’m just sad I’ve lost my husband,” I said. “There’s nothing else to say.” I walked away from her and looked at the gardens. There were shrubs and little hedges of an institutional kind, the sort you might see in the car park of a business center. The building itself had a mid-twentieth-century solidity about it but was noncommittal at the same time, a bit like a church, a bit like a school. But behind, and towering above it, was a chimney. They couldn’t hide that. There was smoke coming out of it. It couldn’t be Greg. Not yet.

Now I was sure. I had known already, but perhaps I’d forced it out of my mind, especially for the funeral. Everyone, absolutely everyone, knew that Greg had died with another woman and that this meant they had been having an affair. And what did they think about me?