In a strange way, the people I took most comfort from were not friends, certainly not family, but those I had never met before. There was an old primary-school friend whose name I recognized as the James with whom Greg had run three-legged races; there was a large man with a face like a bloodhound’s who had taught Greg piano when he was a teenager. There were several clients, who came up to tell me how much they had depended on Greg, trusted him, liked him, and would miss him now that he was gone. It was such a relief to be with people who didn’t know the backstory to his death, and were there simply to say goodbye.

“He was a very dear young man,” said Mrs. Sutton, in a piercing voice. She wore a black silk dress and seamed stockings, and had a creased face and silver hair in an immaculate bun. She looked very old and very rich, with an aquiline nose and straight-backed bearing that seemed to belong to a different era.

“Yes, he was,” I agreed.

“I always looked forward to his visits. I’m going to miss him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said absurdly.

“As a matter of fact, he was going to visit me the day after he died. That was how I heard—when he failed to arrive I rang his office to ask where he was. It was such a shock.” She gave me a piercing glance. “I’ll be eighty-eight in two months’ time. It doesn’t seem right, does it? People dying out of their turn.”

I couldn’t speak and she lifted a hand like a claw and placed it lightly over mine. “You have my sympathy, my dear,” she said.

For the main part, however, it was a funeral party where nobody seemed able to do the sort of things that funeral parties are for. They couldn’t offer their condolences without seeming embarrassed or creepy; they couldn’t engage in uncomplicated, emotional reminiscences about the deceased. They couldn’t do anything else either. Some picked at the food, others gulped the wine (the woman who had approached me outside the crematorium had much more than was good for her, whether in remorse or some perverse kind of revenge). And gradually they just peeled away.

In the end, Gwen, Mary and I were left with a handful of Greg’s relatives I didn’t know; they had ordered a taxi that kept not arriving. They sat on the sofa with empty glasses, refusing top-ups and more food because it would spoil their dinner. They phoned the cab company repeatedly while we cleared and wiped and finally vacuumed around them. In the end they left, muttering something about finding a taxi in the street or catching a tube.