‘Let me see,’ Julie said, looking at the card and reading from it. ‘Three green bottles, hanging on a wall. And if one green bottle should accidentally fall …’ Julie looked at me, eyes narrowed in confusion. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

I looked around, saw the chaos where we were sitting – in what was usually a pristinely kept home – and I saw how manic and near the edge Julie was. She’d spiral further if I told her what the note had said at the roadside, but I knew I couldn’t ignore it. This was something dark. I didn’t know why, but I was sure it was no coincidence that Julie had received an identical arrangement to the one left where Clare had died.

‘Who brought these?’ I asked, without answering her question.

My heart was thudding. I looked out of the window as if there was a chance I’d spot someone waiting in the distance. The glare of the midday sun caught my eyes and made them water.

‘I’ve no idea. Sorry. I’ve not exactly been coping,’ Julie said, ‘as you can see.’ She gestured around the room, to the chaos evident on every surface. ‘Brendan took the kids out because he said he needed a break from it all. I promised him I’d try and do something … but that was before I saw the papers.’

She leant forwards and poured a generous measure of vodka into her glass.

‘I don’t like this,’ I mumbled.

The sense of unease I’d been feeling had started to slip into panic. The words of that stupid rhyme playing over and over again in my head. Counting down until there were no green bottles left.

‘I’m old enough to drink if I want to,’ Julie bit back.

For a second I was pulled from my thoughts. Confused.

‘I’m not talking about your drinking, Julie. I’m talking about these flowers. That note.’

She started to sing the words, swaying her vodka glass. She was more drunk than I’d thought.

‘Some silly nonsense,’ she added. ‘God, do you remember when people used to sing that to us when we were at school?’ she laughed, a hollow laugh. ‘God, we thought things were so hard then. Little did we know. To be a wee “green bottle” again …’

It was a nonsensical nickname, based solely on the green of our uniform. Our green pinafores. The heavy gabardine of our school coats that covered us from the knee up in voluminous bottle green. Sometimes it came with a gentle shove from the singer, just to see what would happen if we did ‘accidentally fall’.

It was harmless.

It had been harmless.

But now one of my very solid group of three friends had become just two. One of us was gone …