“Oh.” I stared at the screen in frustration. I had this idea that the answers I needed were locked in that slim little box, if only I could find the key. Idly, I tried the names of her two stepchildren, with no success. “No ideas?” I asked Frances.

She shrugged helplessly. “You could try her maiden name. Furness.”

“No,” I said, after a few seconds.

“Her date of birth: the twentieth of April 1964.”

So she was forty-four, a decade older than me. I typed it in. Nothing.

“She used to talk about a dog she had when she was a girl.”

“What was its name?”

“She never said. But, look, aren’t there ways around things like this?”

I couldn’t help smiling at that. “Probably, but if there were, do you really think I’d know about them?”

“Oh, well, I guess we’ll just have to hope there aren’t other appointments waiting to be missed. In the meantime I need to get quotations on marquees before tomorrow morning.”

THAT DAY I had told Frances I needed to leave early. Even so, when I hurried up the road Gwen was waiting at my door, several carrier-bags at her feet. “Happy birthday!” she said, kissing me on both cheeks. “But where’ve you been? I was worried you’d forgotten or got cold feet.”

“Just trying to catch up with a few things,” I said vaguely.

She looked at me curiously. “You’re being rather mysterious.”

I felt flustered. “I don’t mean to be. It’s just I’ve been having to sort out things, like—like money.” Untrue, although, of course, that was what I should have been sorting out, and if I thought of my financial situation, I felt dizzy with anxiety.

“Horrible for you,” Gwen said sympathetically.

“It’s got to be done.” I fished my key out of my pocket. “Let’s get inside out of the cold. I’ll carry some of these. What’s in here? I thought you said just a few people.” We went into the kitchen.

“That’s right. Fifteen, twenty at most.” She started unpacking the bag on to the kitchen table. “Hummus with pita bread, and guacamole. I’ve bought the avocados for that. Tortilla chips with salsa, pistachio nuts. Nothing much to do except put them in bowls.”

“What time is everyone coming?” I was filled with panic. I was used to being Ellie-and-Greg facing the world together. I’d lost the ability to cope on my own—unless, that is, I was pretending to be someone else, in which case I seemed to be managing much better.

“About six, six thirty.”

“What shall I wear?”

“Calm down. It’s just your friends. We’ll have a poke through your wardrobe in a moment, but it’s casual. People will be coming straight from work. You can wear what you’ve got on now, if you want.”