‘Anyway, let’s not talk about this, shall we? It’s rubbish. How are you? It’s been a little while since we last did one of these random booze-ups. What are you up to now? Still teaching, I assume?’

‘I am, and I can tell from the face you make when I say that, that you’re horrified.’ Nikki smiled and took a sip of her spritzer. ‘I’m teaching part time at a college now, which you would know if you ever paid attention to my Facebook updates. I’m covering the English and History departments. Are you still at the newspaper?’

Heather winced, then tried to hide it by eating several crisps at once. ‘It didn’t work out. I’ve been freelancing for a while and it suits me better.’ More bad memories. She downed the rest of her drink, and raised her eyebrows. ‘Another?’

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the pub, both switching to soft drinks when the edges of the room started to blur. At some point, one of them suggested getting food, and soon the table was crowded with plates, with smears and blobs of alarmingly bright yellow curry sauce and scattered bits of poppadum. They talked about school, dredging up all the old stories that must by tradition be dredged up at such times. Eventually, the evening crowd began to arrive, and they agreed that it was likely time to make their way home – spending all day in the pub was not, Nikki pointed out, a great look for a teacher.

‘Suit yourself, professor.’

Outside, the day had grown gloomy and cold, and as Nikki called them a cab, Heather found that the small cache of good spirits she had built up over the afternoon was leaking away into the shadows. She wasn’t going home now, to her untidy yet cosy room in a house shared with other untidy people; she would be going back to her mother’s empty house, no doubt to a long night of trawling over bad memories and unanswered questions. Something must have shown on her face, because once she slipped her phone back in her pocket, Nikki touched her arm softly.

‘Hey. Cab’s going to be a few minutes. Are you all right?’

Heather shrugged. The fizzy drinks were a sour slick inside her, and she felt too weary to pretend.

‘The suicide note was really weird. Did I tell you that?’

Nikki shook her head, her brown eyes sombre.