She wanted to be a writer. Or a journalist. As long as she could write, she told me. It was so easy to talk to Mari. And the more time I spent with her, the more I liked her. She was about a foot shorter than me, and I loved seeing her head tilt up towards me, full of curiosity.

We said hello to each other the next day, before starting to exchange a few words whenever we met. Then we started to message each other. It wasn’t long before I started to feel butterflies in my stomach whenever I thought about her, and I could tell that she felt the same way about me.

I liked her warm, shy smile. And when she laughed, her whole face changed – it opened up, her teeth appeared and her dimples looked so delicate. I wanted to touch them. I liked her hands, how small they were in mine. How warm they were. I liked her voice – hesitant whenever she asked me a question, confident when she answered one of mine. She never seemed to doubt anything she said.

And she was so sweet and nice.

A couple of weeks before the show I was ill. Not at death’s door or anything like that, I just had a high temperature and a thumping headache. My whole body ached. So I stayed off school for a few days. Mari came to see me every afternoon, even if I told her to stay away so she wouldn’t get the same bug. She insisted though, saying she never got sick. ‘It’ll be fine. Plus, your mum’s never here. Someone has to look after you.’

One day she brought me some soup and basically force-fed me. I was two years old again. And when Mari, of course, did get sick a few days later, it was my turn to look after her, even though she didn’t want me to see her pale and with dry lips, cold one minute, hot the next. But there was nothing I wanted more. And when she fell asleep in my lap one afternoon, I felt warm and good, deep down inside. It was a feeling I’d never experienced before.

I’d gone out with other girls. Mainly because I’d thought it would be cool to have a girlfriend. And sometimes I’d thought I was in love with them … Mari was the first girl I was actually in love with though. For real.

When I finished telling Ole about Mari, there was a slight pause before he said: ‘Even, do you know if…?’ He hesitated again, before carrying on. ‘Did Mari ever talk about … me in the days before she died?’

I frowned.