‘Nobody told me,’ Georgia said bitterly as the hug came apart. ‘I’m so pissed off. I was messaging Sophie, complaining about how much homework I had. And bitching about the big row I had with Mum. I never would have mentioned that stuff if Mum and Dad told me she was depressed.’

Zac shook his head. ‘Don’t blame your parents. Sophie didn’t want you to worry. She was going mad because everyone kept asking the same questions. Asking how she was doing. Asking how her meds were working. You were the one person who didn’t keep going on about it.

‘But things kept getting worse. Your dad and I both thought you had a right to know when Sophie took the overdose, but Sophie erupted when your dad said he was taking you to visit her in hospital.’

Georgia felt like she’d been shot. The anger towards her parents had focused her mind. But it wasn’t their fault, which just left grief.

‘Why would she do it?’ Georgia yelled furiously. ‘She did one thing wrong in her whole life. In a new job, when she was exhausted at the end of a fourteen-hour shift. It’s not fair.’

‘It’s not,’ Zac said as the front door swung open. ‘I won’t be letting this drop. The hospital wanted a scapegoat and Sophie was an easy mark.’

‘Georgia?’ John asked, then saw Zac and his daughter. ‘Zac! I wondered where you were. I left messages on your phone.’

‘Hello, Mr Pack,’ Zac said. Then awkwardly added, ‘John.’

Georgia had never heard her dad say anything bad about Zac, but they had zilch in common.

John Pack ran a small business, wore the V-neck sweaters his mum bought him for Christmas and liked watching a bit of football on the telly. Zac Li was half his age and a left-wing activist who proudly boasted that he’d egged three prime ministers and spent his teens leading a pro-democracy campaign in his native Hong Kong.

But both men adored Sophie, and nothing was held back as they hugged and slapped each other on the back.

‘There was nothing I could do, John,’ Zac said. ‘She was dead when I got home.’

‘Come inside and sit down,’ John said firmly. ‘Your knuckles are bloody. Have you been in a fight?’

‘Scraped them at work, carrying a patient downstairs,’ Zac lied, staring at his hand like he was seeing the wound for the first time. ‘I’m walking home.’

‘Well, at least let me fix you an Uber. It’s six miles.’

‘You’ll see me in a coffin before you see me in an Uber,’ Zac said, narrowing his eyes.

Hating big corporations was part of Zac’s left-wing thing. Georgia remembered Sophie’s mischievous laugh as she told an anecdote about buying Zac’s birthday gift from Amazon and having to bury the packaging at the bottom of the bin before he got home from work.