‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Do the maths. Baby due on July the second. It’s the first of May in two days’ time.’

I thought about that. ‘If it’s about to be May, and my exams start on May the eleventh, I should step up my revision.’

Sasha reached across and pushed the fruit bowl towards me. ‘Eat another banana,’ she said. ‘Brain food.’

We called it the ‘fruit bowl’, but it only contained four blackening bananas.

‘I aready had one,’ I said. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘OK, but we need to get rid of these before they start to smell.’

‘I’ll make a banana cake.’

‘Yes! Can you make it so we can toast it and put extra butter on?’ She paused. ‘For the baby.’

‘Sure thing!’

A part of me was panicking about my exams, even though I knew I was doing everything I should be doing. Until recently I’d thought it would be OK to wing it, and I’d be just about all right, but now I wanted to do extra well. I didn’t need to get nines in everything, but I wanted to. Then I’d go and tell Joe, and he’d be pleased for me. That was my aim. If I had a piece of news like that then it would be all right to go back and see him. Wouldn’t it?

I walked slowly down the road, opening the email as I went. I stopped altogether to read it and let other people walk past.

Hi there, Ariel and Izzy. Hope you’re both doing well. It was nice to talk about Joe with you the other week. Hope you’ve got everything you need for your article. I was thinking, it’s really going above and beyond to do this sort of research for a school mag rather than just rehashing the old stuff. I think you have great futures in front of you.

Sorry this has taken a while. I reached out to Troy like I promised, but I’m afraid when he finally did reply it wasn’t the most friendly. Copied and pasted here. After he sent it he disappeared from my LinkedIn, so I’m thinking he really doesn’t want to talk. Anyway, I tried. Sorry not to have something better to report.

Cheers, Lucas

Then, in a different font, it said:

No, of course I’m not interested in talking about Joe, least of all to some kids. Journos are all the same whoever they’re writing for and I have nothing to say to any of them except fuck off. Surprised at you tbh. T

That stung. I’d thought that Troy and I, as Joe’s best friends, should have had some sort of affinity.

I needed to find Troy myself.