But then he’d caught sight of my expression. ‘Christ, it’s not that bad, is it? I thought we’d been having a laugh. No one’s died, you know.’ When I hadn’t answered, he’d said, ‘Oh shit. Oh, Brinley, my stupid mouth. I’m sorry.’

He’d offered to drive me back, downed a coffee and a sandwich from the bar menu, and now here we were, heading to east London along the dark vein of the A13, choked with high-rises and cranes that rise out of the ground like ghostly arms.

Pearline’s light is on, a bright spot in the run-down block of flats that was Aunt Peg’s home for almost all her life. My great-aunt had wanted to raise her family here, but after five stillbirths had given up hope. She’d lived here with her husband Alfred, squeezed into three rooms and a tiny bathroom. A make-do-and-mend life, but a happy one, until he’d been taken from her by mesothelioma. When my mother had died, and I couldn’t stand to be near my father, she had opened her home to me.

The lift isn’t working and someone has tried – unsuccessfully – to clean up the vomit in the corner of the stairwell, that curious stink of parmesan and disinfectant. God knows what Lawrie thinks, but whatever it is, he doesn’t say it.

Pearline has invited me to knock on her door as soon we arrive, however late it is, but I want to go straight to Aunt Peg’s flat, and the keys are already in my hand when we reach the fourth floor.

The security light at the top of the stairwell comes on automatically, spotlighting a row of identical front doors. Many years of my life have been spent here, but as I’ve grown older, my job opening up new places and experiences, I’ve come to understand that Aunt Peg and the other inhabitants of this estate have always existed on the fringes of poverty, and it hurts my heart.

We walk in silence down the narrow corridor, graffitied notes of despair on the walls, a concrete balcony overlooking the floor below. Aunt Peg’s flat is number twenty-three and we’re almost there, almost home, when I stop so sharply that Lawrie, who is a couple of footsteps behind, knocks into me.

A metal padlock – new and shiny – hangs against the chipped red paint of the front door. A desolate bunting of blue and white police tape announces her death.

The words rise again but they cannot fight their way out, and I make a sound, a low grunt of pain. Lawrie slips his hand into mine and squeezes it, but I can’t think of anything beyond what that loop of tape means and how my great-aunt has died.