Having unpacked the shopping while Clare was still holed up in the loo, I’d succumbed to the nervous exhaustion of the day and drifted off on the sofa. For how long? An hour, at least.

I stagger up, grab my jacket and tear out into the cold. From the doorstep, I catch a fragment of scarlet puffa jacket near the railings on the western side of the square; the faint crack of Clare’s boot heels on pavement. She’s heading towards the high street.

‘Clare? Clare!’ I sprint to catch her up. ‘Where are you going? Not to Melia’s?’

She doesn’t slacken her pace as she addresses me sideways. ‘Right first time.’

‘But why?’

‘Why?’ She gives an open-mouthed cackle of laughter, her breath a succession of puffs in front of her face ‘Because I’ve got a couple of questions for the slut, that’s why.’

The same insult Kit used. They’re all calling her that and she doesn’t deserve it. But I have to pick my battles. Defending her to Kit was one thing, but defending her to Clare is more than my life’s worth.

‘I’ll come with you.’ I’m breathing heavily after the dash, recoiling from the bite of the chill on my face. The threatened storm hasn’t yet broken, but the wind is low and strong, picking up leaves and runaway litter. A putrid odour reaches my nose.

‘I thought you said you weren’t allowed?’ Clare snaps. ‘Can’t keep away, can you?’

‘Listen, I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m convinced all of this is to do with drugs. I think maybe Kit owed his dealers money and they took him down.’

‘“Took him down”? Are you for real?’ Her tone is full of the contempt she normally reserves for politicians on TV and clients who turn out to be time wasters.

‘I am for real, yes! There’s all this knife crime now, it’s in the papers every day. People are killing each other over trivial things, like just looking at someone the wrong way. We like to think that this stuff is only ever gang-related, but it could happen to anyone.’

‘Far more likely he’s topped himself because he can’t bear being with her a moment longer.’

‘You don’t mean that, Clare.’

Her snarl begins in profile and ends face-on, just as we reach the high street and draw up at the kerb. ‘Don’t tell me what I mean.’ And she marches into the road with only the briefest regard for an oncoming single-decker bus, which blares its horn and brakes. Delayed by this and a pair of cyclists, I scurry after her towards the Lamb, the only pub on this stretch. On the pavement outside, smokers notice our fierce, unhappy faces, out of kilter with the prevailing Friday-night spirit. Will someone report us, I wonder: a wild-looking man stalking a well-dressed woman? A second account of his suspicious behaviour in four days? At the thought, I hang back; only when we reach Tiding Street do I draw level again. The street is a far more alluring prospect than on previous occasions, the residents of Victorian cottages clearly recognizing that this is their time of year: there are beautifully decked trees in almost every window and wreaths adorning most of the doors.

Not on the Ropers’, however. No tree glitters at their window, no twists of holly and ivy bedeck the door. As Clare rings the bell, holding it down for a full five seconds, a man strides past with a huge bouquet of flowers and I’m assaulted by olfactory memory: the scent of the flowers we brought the night we came for dinner, the night all of this was set in motion. The next thought comes in a furious surge: What if he’s in there, standing right next to her? This will all be over!

Before I can assess how this thought makes me feel, the door opens. Though I’ve half-prepared myself for the state Melia might be in, I can tell Clare is rocked by the sight of her. She’s swollen-faced, her hair limp and lips rough and chewed. Dressed in leggings and a fleece, she has nothing on her feet, making her a full head shorter than us. Luckily for her, all of this has the effect of stifling the barrage of insults Clare surely had ready and instead we are divided by a strange, downcast expectation.

‘Melia,’ I say into the void, ‘we’re so sorry—’

‘I don’t want to see you,’ she interrupts in a desperate, raw-throated voice. Though she raises a hand, she doesn’t quite close the door.

‘We understand you don’t want visitors right now . . .’ Clare has found her voice and it’s very different from the one I was anticipating: cool, underlaid with compassion, as if she recognizes an injured animal when she sees one. ‘But can we come in for a couple of minutes? We might be able to help you figure out what’s going on.’

Perhaps it’s a conditioned response to the voice of her professional superior, but Melia surrenders almost at once and without anyone uttering another word we are moving through the small unlit hallway, up the narrow staircase and directly into the living room, where we sit side by side on the yellow sofa.

There is a tree, a small potted one on the floor by the fireplace, a handful of baubles, a sparkly ‘M’ at the top. Who chose that ‘M’ for a star, Melia or Kit? There are only three or four cards on the mantelpiece, one I recognize as being from us. Clare always sends them through the post, even to those who live walking distance away. She likes imagining cards on the doormat, swept up and enjoyed over the first drink of the evening.

There is no offer of a drink on this occasion, though Melia looks as if she could do with something hot, her normally glowing skin tinged pale blue. It’s very cold and I remember her complaining of huge gas bills. They can’t have been cut off, can they?

Still unsure if Clare intends making accusations about the affair, I take the initiative, hardly knowing what I’m saying: ‘Melia, you probably know Kit and I had a row on the boat on Monday night, but that’s the last I saw of him, I swear. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up your calls, but I had no idea all of this was going on, and we were in Edinburgh until late last night, weren’t we, Clare?’

Melia just blinks at me, otherwise unresponsive to this gush of information.

‘Richard filled me in,’ Claire says, as if I have not spoken. ‘Are you being kept up to date? Should you even be on your own like this? It’s a hugely stressful thing to have to go through.’

‘I’m okay. I’ll be the first to hear if anything happens.’ Melia looks at her, her distress clearly unadulterated by any additional fear of her friend and colleague. Can’t she guess from Clare’s manner towards me that we’ve been discovered? Should I have texted to warn her we were coming? But even if I hadn’t had to scramble after Clare the way I did, I’d have needed to be aware of the police accessing my messages, reading meaning where there is none.

She turns her hollow gaze back to me. ‘I just want to know where he is. Or where his body is.’

‘His body?’ I give a mirthless laugh. ‘I think that’s a bit melodramatic, don’t you?’

‘Melodramatic? You just admitted you got into a fight with him! Just tell me what happened? After you got off the boat.’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘Right.’ She fixes me with emotionless eyes that make what she says next sound all the more chilling: ‘I hate you, Jamie.’