To one side there was a table with a piece of lined paper taped to it, reading ‘PRESS’. Behind it a bored-looking young man was reading a tabloid newspaper.

A grey-haired man in a suit was blocking our way. He had a moustache and the air of a sergeant major. ‘Sorry to bother you. Can I take your names, please?’

‘I’m Eleanor Falkner. I’m Greg Manning’s wife. These are my friends.’

He introduced himself as the coroner’s officer and pointed us to seats in the front row. Mary sat on one side of me, Gwen the other. A middle-aged woman in fawn slacks and a red sweater came to the front of the room and tinkered with a huge old-fashioned tape-recorder. She pushed cables into sockets and fiddled with switches. She looked up at the room and smiled vaguely at us. ‘It’ll be all right on the night,’ she said, and bustled out again, throwing bright, complicit smiles round the room, as if we were all in on a tremendously good joke.

Two women with identical bright-blonde helmets of hair positioned themselves just behind us; they were whispering to each other and occasionally giving discreet chuckles. It was like a register-office wedding, I thought. I wiped my palms down my skirt and pushed invisible strands of hair behind my ears.

Just before ten, the door opened again and a group of three entered and were directed by the coroner’s officer to the front-row chairs a few places along from where we sat. A middle-aged man with corrugated greying hair and a silk tie, a slender young woman, whose pale hair rippled down her back and whose aquiline nose quivered, and a young man with untidy dark hair, untied shoelaces and a stud in his nose. I tensed and clutched Gwen’s arm.

‘That’s them,’ I hissed.

‘Who?’

‘Her family.’

I stared at the man. After a few seconds he turned and met my gaze. Again I felt it was like a wedding: the bride and bridegroom’s families finding themselves in the same room, curious and suspicious. Someone near him murmured something and he turned round. It was his name. Hugo. Hugo Livingstone. The proceedings were late getting under way because the woman couldn’t get her tape-recorder to function. She pushed switches up and down and even banged it with her hand but nothing worked. A couple of men behind me got up and joined her. In the end, they just pushed the plug into another electrical socket and its lights came on. The woman put on some earphones and sat down behind the machine, which almost hid her from view. The court officer asked us all to rise. I had expected a judge in robes and a wig but Dr Gerald Sams was just a man in a suit, carrying a large bundle of files. He sat down behind the table at the front and began to address us in a calm, deliberate tone. He offered his condolences to me and to Milena Livingstone’s husband and two children. ‘Step-children,’ muttered one loudly.

He gave a brief talk about the process. He said there might be some details that family members would find upsetting, but that the inquest was often helpful to the next-of-kin, giving a clear account of what had happened and perhaps some sort of closure. He would call witnesses, but this was not a trial. Any interested person could question them and, indeed, ask questions at any point. He also said that he had read through the preliminary material, it seemed to be a straightforward case and we would get through it quickly. He asked if anybody had legal representation. Nobody spoke.

I took a notebook and a pen from my pocket. I opened it and wrote ‘Inquest’ at the top of a blank page. I underlined the word, then turned the underlining into a box surrounding it. Then I turned the box into a three-dimensional box and shaded the top with cross hatching. Meanwhile a police officer had come forward to the little desk and chair at the front of the room and swore, on a tatty copy of the New Testament, to tell the truth. He was an unremarkable young PC, with reddish-brown hair combed flat against his head, but I studied him with fascination and dread. He was the man who had found my husband.

He consulted his notebook and, in a strange monotone, like an unprepared and untalented actor, he gave a halting account of how he had driven to Porton Way in response to a call from a member of the public who had reported seeing a fire.

Dr Sams asked if the officer could describe Porton Way.

He looked puzzled. ‘There’s not much to say, really,’ he said. ‘There used to be factories and warehouses there, but it’s mainly derelict now. They’re starting to redevelop it, though. There are going to be new houses and office blocks.’

‘Is the road busy at that time of night?’ asked Dr Sams. ‘With commuters and suchlike?’

‘No,’ said the officer. ‘It’s not a through route. There are a few construction people during the day but not at that time. Sometimes kids steal cars and drive them round there, but we didn’t see anyone else.’

‘Tell us what you found.’

‘The fire had died down by the time we got there but we could see the smoke. The car had slipped down the embankment and turned over. We scrambled down and we quickly saw that there were people in it but they were clearly dead.’

‘Clearly?’

The officer pulled a face. ‘We didn’t even see there were two of them at first.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘My partner called the fire brigade and an ambulance. I walked round just checking. I couldn’t really get close. It was still hot.’

He was talking as if he had come across a bonfire that had got out of control. Dr Sams was writing notes on a pad of paper. When he had finished he put the end of the pen into his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘Did you form an impression of what had happened?’

‘It was obvious,’ the officer said. ‘The car lost control, came off the road, rolled down the embankment, hit a concrete ridge, burst into flames.’

‘No,’ said Dr Sams. ‘I meant more how it had happened, how the car lost control.’

The officer thought for a moment. ‘That’s pretty obvious as well,’ he said. ‘Porton Way goes straight and then it suddenly curves to the right. It’s not very well lit. If a driver was inattentive – if he was talking to his passenger, or something like that – he could miss the turn, carry straight on and then be in big trouble.’

‘And you think that was what happened?’

‘We checked the scene. There were no skidmarks, so it looks as if the car left the road at speed.’

Dr Sams grunted, scribbled some more notes, then asked the officer if he had anything else he wanted to add. The policeman looked at his notes. ‘The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. The two bodies were pronounced dead at the scene, but we knew that anyway.’

‘Is there any suggestion that any other vehicle was involved in the crash?’

‘No,’ said the officer. ‘If he crashed because he was avoiding another vehicle, there would have been skidmarks of some kind.’

Dr Sams looked towards those of us in the front row. ‘Does anyone have any questions arising from this statement?’

I had many, many questions buzzing around my head, but I didn’t think that the answers to any would be found in that officer’s little black notebook. Nobody else spoke either.

‘Thank you,’ said Dr Sams. ‘Could I ask you to stay for a few minutes, in case any questions arise?’

He nodded and made his way to his seat, a few rows behind. It occurred to me that this was probably a morning off for him, an escape from the office and having to fill in reports.

Dr Sams then called Dr Mackay. A woman in a trouser suit came forward and sat in the chair. She was about fifty with dark hair that looked dyed. She didn’t swear on the Bible. Instead she read a promise from a piece of paper. I agreed with that in theory, but as she said the words, they sounded thin and unconvincing. I preferred the idea that if you didn’t tell the truth a bolt of lightning would strike you dead and you’d be punished in hell for all eternity.