My husband rang to say he was in emergency surgery all night. I was looking down through the glass walkway at him at the time, with his arm round another woman and his entire family beside him holding boarding passes. I didn’t go down. I went to a quiet corner and made one phone call.

She had been told that for two years. She believed it, because he is extremely good at that voice.

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PART 4 — WHAT WAS ACTUALLY IN IT

The sealed file was not a weapon my father built.

It is a document pack Emeric Sallow has kept updated since 2016 for exactly one purpose: to be ready if I ever needed to move quickly. Every trustee of every family structure in this country has one and it is the dullest thing imaginable.

What went out at eleven minutes past six that evening was four things.

Notice to terminate the residential occupancy licence on Linnet Hill, with the statutory period, to the occupant.

Notice that the trust would not be renewing the commercial lease on the Verrin Street building at expiry in the following August.

Termination of the vehicle lease.

And the fourth one, which is the one that did it.

Because Whit is not the tenant on that building. His partnership is. There are five partners and they are jointly liable, and a landlord who is not renewing has to notify all of them.

So at eleven minutes past six on a Thursday evening, four surgeons who were at home got an email telling them their practice premises would not be renewed and that they had eleven months to relocate a surgical unit.