I GUESSED THAT SOMETHING WAS WRONG AS SOON AS I….

turned onto the street and pulled up to the house. She was always ready and waiting for me. She’d be peeping through the curtains of the bay windows each Sunday morning at eleven; handbag perched on her arm and keys in her hand, ready to lock up her neat little house ahead of our weekly lunch.
But, that morning, the curtains had not been drawn and fastened into their tie-backs. The papers, the Sunday Times for serious news coverage and the Sunday Mirror, for she loved to keep up to date with all the celebrity nonsense, were still visible through the double glazed porch, lying on the doormat.