She’s quiet for so long that I don’t think that she’s going to tell me, but then she tilts her cheek towards me and looks at me from under her false eyelashes. ‘I tried it Esen’s way for a while, but it didn’t work for me. I can’t disassociate like that, you know? I may as well be dead.’

‘I thought we didn’t have a choice? I mean we have to disassociate. We are dead.’

‘Listen, Ash,’ she says, but she doesn’t say it like Deborah did, like she’s losing her patience. She says it like she’s doing the opposite, like she’s waiting for me to catch up. ‘I know you think you have no choice because you’ve won the worst lottery ever.’ She laughs and I let myself do the same. ‘But choosing not to live is still a choice.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you can do what Esen does and lock it all away and pretend it’s not there or . . .’ She hesitates and I tell myself to be patient as I wonder if she’s ever said this to anyone before.

If she’s ever had to put this into words.

‘It’s like . . .’ She tries again. ‘We’re all the same, right? More or less. If you cut us open, we all have a heart, lungs, ribs. But there’s other stuff, isn’t there? Deeper stuff. That’s unique to us.’

I bring my hand up to my chin, stroking the scar with my knuckle.

‘The physical stuff.’ Dev reaches down to pick up a pebble, sweeping her thumb over it. ‘The stuff that we all do, like sleeping and eating, is easy to let go of because we have no control over it, right?’

I nod.

‘You die. Your heart stops. That’s it. If it started again, you wouldn’t be dead.’

‘True.’

‘But the other stuff . . .’ She shrugs. ‘The stuff deep, deep down that only we know about, is still there.’

‘You mean, like, memories?’

She points the pebble at me. ‘That stuff doesn’t go away, unless you lock it away like Esen does.’

I think of Poppy then, of last night and the look on her face when I told her that I loved her too.

I never want to forget that.

Ever.

‘Why would you want to let go of that stuff, though?’