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desperation, almost, he mentioned a counselling scheme staffed by trained police officers. But I shook my head to that, too. I didn’t want anyone, not yet. I had lost someone I loved more than I’d ever loved anyone. I thought of him on that slab, peered at by Tony and gently covered. I felt guilty. It was I who should have done him that last service.

Chapter Six
    When you’ve been at it for ten years, you can teach on a sort of automatic pilot, so my classes went as normal. One or two of my colleagues remarked how pale I looked, but attributed it to incipient flu. It wasn’t until I started getting a little stream of sympathetic phone calls from people in the orchestra that someone realised there might be something wrong, and Shahida cornered me in the staff loo.
    â€˜Why on earth did you come in?’ she asked.
    â€˜The students –’
    â€˜â€“ could have taken care of themselves, for once. You’re allowed time off for a bereavement, for goodness’ sake.’
    I shook my head.
    She looked at me shrewdly. ‘You’d rather be here? Company? But you’ll have to mourn some time, Sophie. Have you had a good cry yet?’
    I shook my head. I’d sat at the piano playing Schubert till about three when the whiskey and I had fallen asleep on the sofa. I’d woken at six, and made sense of my aching head and body with a long shower.
    â€˜Is Aftab back?’ I asked, retiring to the cubicle.
    â€˜Talking to the police, I gather. They mentioned charging him with wasting police time. But I had a long talk with the nice sergeant – Mr Dale, is it?’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜He said they were still thinking about it. The point is, they think he’s hiding something, Sophie, and no one knows how to persuade him to say anything. I’ve tried. Nothing.’ She paused.
    I flushed the loo and emerged to wash my hands. The water was cold and brown. So was the water from the cold tap. Preferring not to use the towel, I shook my hands dry and waited. I sensed there was something else she wanted to say.
    â€˜He – Mr Dale – says he wants to talk to you. He said he’d be here about six if you could wait that long.’
    Six! But I had nothing to go home for, nothing but an empty house and the knowledge that George would not be phoning.
    Dale met me in the foyer, full of students coming in for evening classes. Two lifts were now out of order. He passed me an expensive-looking white envelope addressed in an elegant italic script.
    He turned aside to scan the noticeboard while I read the letter. If I glanced up, I could see him making the occasional note.
    Groom wondered if I might want to lay a few flowers where they had found George’s body. Would I care to meet him at the Music Centre? He’d already spoken to the Music Centre’s security service.
    I was touched. The human face of the police once again. I found myself grinning: all those preconceptions I was having to revise. And perhaps Groom was right. Seeing the place the accident happened might help.
    â€˜I’ll drop you off, shall I, Sophie?’ asked Dale, appearing at my elbow. ‘You know,’ he continued as we left the building, ‘I’d have expected the college to be making more fuss about this poor kid. A collection or something.’
    I nodded. “Panic but emptiness”,’ I misquoted.
    He laughed. ‘Better try that on Chris. Great reader is Chris. But as it happens I know that one. Forster. One of my girls did him for A level.’
    We talked about his family as he drove the two or three hundred yards to Tesco’s so I could buy some flowers. White roses. Sentimental white bloody roses.
    â€˜Did you know,’ I said, as I slipped back into the car, purring away on double yellow lines, ‘that one of your rear lights has failed? The nearside one.’
    â€˜Blast! We’re supposed to check them, you know, every time we take one