“So young,” I said. The possibility of putting Frances straight receded, and then—as she told me Milena’s husband and her stepchildren were coping as well as could be expected and I expressed sympathy—it vanished altogether.

“Hence the chaos,” said Frances, gesturing at the room.

“It must be hard for you,” I said. “Were you close?”

“When you work together the way we did, you have to be close.” She grimaced. “For better or worse. She wasn’t exactly . . .”

Frances stopped herself. I wondered what she’d been going to say. What wasn’t Milena? I wanted to ask what she had been like, but I was supposed to know that. So instead I nodded and said, “Yes,” in an I-know-just-what-you-mean kind of way.

The door was flung open and Beth tottered in, carrying a tray on which there were a cafetière, two mugs, a milk jug, a bowl of sugar lumps and a plate of biscuits. As she approached she stepped on a file and stumbled. She tried to keep control but disaster was inevitable, as in the seconds after a building has been dynamited from beneath. There was a moment of quiet and then it got noisy and messy. The cafetière banged on to the wooden boards and exploded, sending arcs of coffee everywhere; the jug shattered and a river of milk ran across the floor toward Frances; the mugs broke on impact and shards skidded across the room; sugar lumps bounced up at surprising angles.

“Fuck,” said Beth, from the floor. “Oh, fuck and fuck.”

“Are you hurt?” said Frances. She didn’t seem particularly surprised, just very, very tired.

“Sorry,” said Beth, scrambling to her feet with an expression of almost comical surprise. “It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”

“Let me help,” I said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Frances.

I took Beth’s arm.

“Come on,” I said. “Show me where your cleaning stuff is.”

“Would you? That’s really kind. There’s a mop in the tall cupboard in the kitchen, paper towels in a dispenser, and a dustpan and brush under the sink.”

We went upstairs into the long kitchen that smelt of coffee and fresh-baked bread. When we returned, Frances was on the phone, protesting about something. When she’d hung up, she took off her glasses to rub her eyes.

“Trouble at work?” I laid wads of kitchen towel over the puddles of milk and coffee and started to pick up pieces of glass and china and drop them into a bag. Beth hovered around me, avoiding broken china.