Hannah didn’t feel she could rely on anything at the moment. Indy had gone back to work, sitting at that desk dealing with death notices and flower arrangements and music for services and all the mundane pain and trauma. And then there was this, one of your friends dead, just like Grandpa. How many more people in her life would die? But that was selfish, making it about her. She tried 179to imagine Yu and Bolin, how they felt, but she couldn’t get her head around it.

She couldn’t catch her breath, anxiety creeping up from her stomach, freezing her heart and lungs, closing her throat, making it impossible to swallow. She put a hand against the door jamb and sucked in air, felt her legs weaken, leaned against the wall, blinked to get rid of the spots drifting across her vision.

The second phone was key, that’s what Vic said. She had no idea if that was true but it was an anchor to stop her being cast adrift. She walked to Mel’s bed, threw the teddy on the floor then the bedding, stripping the sheet from the mattress and the pillow cases too, shaking everything down, throwing it all into a pile in the middle of the room like a crumpled carcass. She threw the pillows down too, then flipped the mattress onto the floor, checking underneath the slats on the frame. She pulled the bedframe away from the wall, stuffing her hand into the dusty gap. She came out with tissues, a bookmark, a postcard from her parents in Venice that must’ve slipped down there. The bed had a low base and she heaved it onto its side, found some old running shoes under there, an empty suitcase, some boxes of first-year physics and maths notes. She flipped through the pages, hoping to find something, but it was all just handwritten equations and diagrams, study schedules, boring stuff.

She went to the desk, pulled out the drawers and dumped them on the floor, sifted her hands through the stationery, not even thinking what she might find, just hoping the universe would guide her fingers, though she knew that was ridiculous. She was frantic, throwing junk behind her, getting her fingers into the corners of the drawers, tipping them over to check underneath because she’d seen a TV show once where someone had a secret key taped under their desk drawer. But there was nothing, just a crude drawing of a cock and balls that some moron must’ve done years ago.