Ida looked at me briefly, tapped her cigarette packet to get one out. She lit it. ‘I thought it was a bit harsh, to be honest.’

I waited for her to continue.

‘And a bit odd that she didn’t want to say anything.’ She exhaled the smoke. ‘But I promised to help her to…’ She sighed.

‘To what?’

‘To keep you away from her.’

I felt my eyes widen. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The last few days before … she was killed, she was here, with me.’

‘She was?’

‘Yes.’

‘So…?’ I couldn’t decide which question to ask her first. ‘Did she stay overnight as well?’

Ida nodded and took another drag on her cigarette.

‘I don’t think she was on good terms with her parents. Or … I don’t know.’

‘So she was … here, when she should have been at school?’

‘Yes,’ Ida said.

‘But … was she ill?’

‘No. She didn’t seem to be.’

‘Bu why wouldn’t she talk to me? Did she tell you?’

Ida took a deep breath. ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘But hey, she was my friend. If I could help her in any way…’

I needed a few seconds to absorb what Ida had just told me.

‘Was she scared of me? Is that it?’

‘It was nothing like that. I think she just didn’t want to talk to you.’

‘There wasn’t … anyone else, was there?’

‘Do you mean – was she in love with anyone else?’ She smiled when I nodded. ‘No, Even. She wasn’t. She would have told me that.’

Ida took another drag on her cigarette. For a few moments we just sat there in silence.

‘She was very different, those last few days,’ Ida said at last.

‘Different, how?’

‘As if … well, as if she wasn’t quite with it, if you know what I mean.’

Ida blew the smoke straight up in the air. I watched what little wind there was catch it and whisk it away.

‘She really lost it at one point.’

‘How so?’

‘All the calls – from you. Her dad. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, and her phone just wouldn’t stop ringing. Suddenly she just threw it against the wall. The screen broke almost completely, and something else inside it must’ve bust, too, because she couldn’t turn it back on later.’

I slumped into my chair. I couldn’t imagine Mari acting like that. Why hadn’t she just turned the phone off?

Ida rubbed her eyes, as if the smoke was making them hurt.

‘When was this?’ I asked her.

‘The day she broke up with you.’

Saturday, I said to myself.

‘She regretted it afterwards. Started crying and everything. Made me take her phone to the repair shop for her.’

‘She didn’t want to do it herself?’

‘No, she didn’t want to leave the house. My room, even.’