I wait for Esen to say something, to make a cutting remark, some stupid joke that I can roll my eyes at so I don’t have to look at Poppy who is gazing up at us from the picnic bench, waiting. But Esen doesn’t say anything, just looks at me, then down at her feet, and it’s up to me.

Which is only right; it should come from me.

But I can’t.

‘Come on,’ Poppy says when neither of us answer. ‘You must have been thinking the same thing?’

I shrug, stuffing my hands into the pockets of my jacket, suddenly unsure what to do with them.

‘I mean, why else can I see you guys?’

‘I . . .’ I start to say, but I trail off as the words abandon me, hiding under my tongue.

God, I’m pathetic.

A flash of lightning could strike her now – snuff her right out – and she deserves to know.

I feel wretched as the seagulls wail above us, shrieking like a racket of banshees.

‘You’re right. You can see us because you’re going to die,’ Esen says and it makes me feel even worse.

That it was her who had to say it because I couldn’t.

When I look at Esen, she’s frowning fiercely as if to say, Just tell her.

So I do.

I tell her everything Deborah just told me. About the window. About how when it’s open you can see all grim reapers, not just the one who is assigned to reap you. About the butterfly effect and why it’s so important that we don’t see the people we used to know in case it fucks everything up.

Poppy listens, her mouth a straight line, mirroring her brow as she waits for me to finish. When I do, she doesn’t say anything for a long time, her gaze drifting past me to the light of the bookshop.

‘So that’s it?’ she says, finally. ‘I’m definitely going to die?’

I look down and nod, kicking at a spent cigarette butt at my feet.

‘When?’

When Esen and I don’t respond, just look at each other then in opposite directions, like a couple still smarting from a fight, she laughs and shakes her head, but it isn’t her usual wild, bright laugh.

It’s dull.

Sour.

‘Really?’ She shakes her head. ‘You have no idea?’

I shake my head back. ‘Just that it will be soon.’

‘How soon?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do,’ she says when I won’t look at her. ‘I know that’s why you were in the bookshop so long, Ash. Deborah wasn’t giving you a bollocking, was she? You were talking about me.’

Esen turns to look at me again, her eyebrows raised.