I tried once in a while to explain to Hannah or Thomas that he didn’t say those things to be mean. It wasn’t personal; he just didn’t care enough about anyone to consider their feelings at the expense of forgoing a joke.

‘Tara. Wake up. It’s an emergency.’

Something in Button’s voice scared me shitless, so I hung up, then called back, thinking only—no, nononono.

‘Cookie’s dad shot himself.’

I barely passed Biology 101 (and not for lack of trying), so I can’t really claim to know what the actual physiological reaction to that kind of paralysing shock is. What I do know is how it felt, how I could feel time slow down and blood rush about. Some of those sayings that appear programmed into our semantic memory suddenly made perfect sense—I now knew what it meant to feel like your heart is about to pound right out of your chest, how it really does seem like your own screaming, hysterical voice is coming from miles away. It all happened in the space of a couple of minutes, but I have relived those moments—of my own volition and otherwise—over countless hours, memorizing them, trying to memorialize him.

‘What’s wrong?’

Rosa’s voice is sleepy, annoyed. Maybe the university had surmised that the conservative Jewish princess and I would steep ourselves in each other’s cultures when they decided to make us freshman-year roommates, but the two of us had had problems from day one. She started crying, threw a hairbrush at me and declared that ‘in America, people don’t turn on the light when other people are sleeping’, as I tiptoed around and got dressed for my 7 a.m. class by the tiny bulb on our shared dresser. And I frequently subjected her to Nicole’s company as the two of us did homework or talked in my side of the room, watching her flinch every time we cussed or spoke about Nicole’s trailer-park childhood.

‘I . . . my best friend’s . . . uncle . . .’ I couldn’t achieve any level of coherence. The image of him telling us ghost stories on one of many weekend trips to their country house kept playing in a static-laden, distorted loop in my mind: Cookie, Button and I, curled up in the sprawling living room—comfortably settled into leather, feet dangling on cool, white marble—listening in gleeful trepidation, screaming with terror and delight when the story, told in a low, sonorous voice, ended in a sudden, scary, shouted detail.

And then we would eat. A lot. Crusted cod and thick, tandoori fries. Lemon tarts and eclairs oozing chocolate-streaked cream. Aunty’s special Nutella-filled crêpes, special mostly because they were just so damn good. The ground staff would set up the barbecue and we would grill chicken and sausages and peppers and pineapples. They relaxed then, too; took off their daytime livery and put on an array of florid lungis.