The inquest would take months and return an open verdict. I didn’t go to the final hearing. I didn’t see Zack or Priss or Rob again. Nor David. I thought he might show up but I was wrong again. The only one I saw was Alice. It was a few days after Christmas. She was sitting in her car in the car park behind Waitrose. The snow had all melted and lay in slushy pools full of floating, bloated fag ends.

Alice rolled down the window. We exchanged a few blunt words. I walked closer to the car but she rolled the window back up before I got there. I wished Marcus was there, the low voice and restraining hand. But Marcus was staying at his mum’s.

She started the engine and I went and stood in front of the car. It was a neat little Volkswagen, all shiny and red, a gift no doubt. I felt like a shark circling a diving bell. There are times when anger makes you feel superhuman, capable of tearing metal. Alice revved the engine.

“Go on then,” I mouthed.

Bless her, I could see she really wanted to. She had more than a touch of crazy. When I stepped aside, she drove off riding the clutch. A shitty driver in a car someone bought her. I wished her ill and then I stopped wishing her ill and started crying.

Marcus didn’t come and he didn’t phone. I had left a message with his mum, but something in her voice stopped me calling back. In the run-up to the funeral, I went to see Peter, calling on him at his parents’ house as of old. We sat on the stone wall that enclosed the graveyard.

“Are they going to put her here?”

“I think so.”

Grief was making ghouls of us. Peter’s face was the color of a dead tooth. I was wearing the clothes I had slept in, the same clothes I had been wearing the day before.

“Have you seen Marcus?”

“Once,” he said.

“How is he?”

“He’s angry. He’s not thinking straight.”

“Should I go and see him?”

“I’d leave it a bit.”

I nodded. There was something I wanted to ask him.

“Pete, at the manor that summer, were you and David … I mean were you fucking him?”

Peter got to his feet.

“No, Andy. Don’t worry. You got there first.”

I stayed sitting on the wall, the cold sinking into me, staring him in the eye.

“She was wearing my coat.”

Peter gave me what I can only call a strange look.

“What would you have done if I’d said yes, Andy?” Then he walked quickly away before I could answer.