I wake up, thinking that I’ll go and see Lara and tell her about Leo, but when it comes to it I don’t have the energy for anything, so I follow my usual routine and stay home. I am so good at persuading Dad not to go to work that the part where I either fake vomit or have a breakdown is just a piece of admin now, but today is different. Leo’s story has blown my shaky edifice to pieces. He had a freak accident in the woods, fell down and died, and was covered by earth and never found. And then, as soon as his body was discovered, he disappeared.

I never said goodbye. The sense of loss is overwhelming. I need to tell Lara. Tomorrow.

I have a breakdown to make Dad stay home, and for the first time in ages it isn’t a fake one. I need every moment of it, every single hug I can get him to give me while we watch movies and he takes me to Beachview to see the emergency doctor and I go to the cupboard and wait to die.

I hope and hope and hope, and then the door opens and she’s there. She has something new to tell me. I can see it.

‘Joe,’ she says, and she kisses me in the only way she can. Our faces disappear into each other a bit. I used to feel nothing when this happened, but today it makes me do a kind of shiver. I missed her with every atom of my non-being, and she’s back. I want to hang on to this non-kiss forever, with everything I have.

‘What?’

‘I found Troy. But it’s not just that. I found something else. There’s something I really, really need you to look at.’

I walk round the tiny space while she opens up her phone. I’m too tense. There’s nowhere to go because the other end of the room is just three steps away, but I do it anyway. Step, step, step one way. Step, step, step back again. Step, step, step. Step, step …

‘Here. Sit down.’

At first I don’t register what she’s showing me.

‘Oh God,’ I say. ‘Is that Troy grown up? Is he a … painter?’

‘Yeah, but it’s not that. Look. Down here.’

I’m still staring at Troy. His hair has faded as if he’s started to wash the colour out, but he’s exactly the same Troy. I see him every day, and now here he is again, smiling awkwardly at a camera, with wrinkles.

I tear my eyes away and focus on the thing Ariel’s trying to show me instead. Even this takes a while because my head is so full of the sight of Troy painting in France in his thirties.