Sophie turned to look at us. ‘I can handle this,’ she said.

‘We are a bereaved family,’ Sandy Caine cried, and the struggle she had maintaining her voice made her grief all the more raw. ‘I have lost a husband. My daughter has lost a father.’

Sophie turned to us, maintaining an executive calm. ‘Let’s take a short break and then we can get started again.’

We slowly rose from our chairs, realising that the moment we had all primed ourselves for was not going to happen until Sandy Caine had stopped shouting, and that was not going to happen any time soon.

‘These women – these women! – they are not feminist icons! They are home wreckers! They are whores! And I have seen them all before! They came to our family home!’

We were hurrying away now from Sandy Caine’s invasion, heading for a service door at the back of the office.

‘The whores on the door!’ Sandy Caine said. ‘Those three!’ She meant Marta and Rani from Samarkand Wealth Management and Wendy from the conference in Helsinki. ‘They came to my house! They spoke to my daughter when she was tiny! They tried to intimidate us! And you gullible fools turn them into heroes!’

Marta and Rani exchanged awkward glances. Wendy stumbled into them, almost fell to her knees. I helped her to stand up. Her ethnic wrap was dragging on the floor like the flag of a defeated army.

‘And her! The dating app bitch! She’s the worst of the lot!’

‘Out the back door,’ I said. ‘Keep going!’

But James Caine’s widow was pointing at me and I felt a chill in my blood as she began a chant that was taken up by her daughter.

‘Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!’

I fled with the others, Marta and Rani staggering in their tailored business suits and high heels, one of my arms wrapped around the shoulder of poor Wendy, her eyes streaming with tears, with Sophie behind us attempting to address the press as if this was just a bad day at the office and normal service would be resumed as soon as possible. Fat chance, I thought.

‘Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!’

We burst out of the back door and stood in the shocking daylight by the recycling bins, sweating and trembling and glad to be out of it.

‘Sandy was always a lunatic,’ said Marta, pulling out a pack of low-tar Marlboro.

‘That’s why Jim was always so keen to get out of the house,’ said Rani, accepting a cigarette. ‘What man wouldn’t want to get away from that crazy old bat?’

‘Their happy home was wrecked long before any of us came along,’ Marta said.

Wendy smiled weakly at me. ‘I couldn’t believe what they were shouting at you,’ she said.

‘We’re OK now,’ I said. ‘But – yeah – it’s not pleasant, is it? Kill her, kill her! Jesus Christ.’

Rani and Marta laughed, exchanging a knowing glance. Rani sucked hungrily on her low-tar cigarette and narrowed her eyes at me.