‘Because I am.’

‘No need to snap.’

‘I’m not snapping,’ he snaps. ‘I’m scared. And I’m not afraid of admitting that. I’m not, you know.’

Jeez. Freddie Carmichael has issues. But that’s not for me to stick my nose in.

He takes the water I hand to him.

‘Cheers …’ he says, and falters.

‘Chloe,’ I remind him.

‘Sorry. Chloe, yeah. Cheers.’

I perch on a bar stool, comfortable enough not to run away but not feeling sufficiently at ease to sit on the other sofa. Freddie drains the water in a series of fast messy gulps, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘This was such a bad idea,’ he says, staring into the empty glass. ‘Jack still gets post.’

Agh. I was hoping that had stopped. It’s impossible to know everything he might be on a mailing list for, though. Before I went to Thailand, a catalogue for camping equipment had arrived for him.

‘It’s like the walls have eyes,’ Freddie says. ‘Everything I do, there’s a thud, or an echo. That lampshade on the ceiling rattles, you know. I’m not imagining things; I’m not.’

‘I know.’

I want to tell Freddie how much I believe him. The lampshade does rattle. But it’s because of the fella who lives upstairs, the one who travels a lot and pulls his suitcase around the wooden floor. Now’s not the time, though. I let Freddie go on.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to remember my brother. But I don’t want to be reminded of him every second of the fucking day. You think that’s sick, don’t you? You do, don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘I mean, it’s hard not to think about my brother and not relate it to how he died.’

I wholeheartedly get it, and I clench the stool I’m perched upon. Thanks to Freddie I can see Jack crossing the road, feet away from this flat, his heart beating with an abundance of life, his mind full and active, and I see the van come hurtling around the bend on the hill. I hate these visions, the ones I’ve been concocting over the past few months. God, I hate them, I hate them, I hate them.

‘Are you okay?’ Freddie asks.

Me? I realise I’m breathing heavily. ‘I was just thinking about …’ And I don’t need to finish the sentence aloud, don’t need to spell out that he’s just reminded me of exactly what happened to Jack. But I don’t know exactly. It’s all guesswork.

‘No one’s gone down for it,’ Freddie says.

‘What?’

‘There’s literally nobody we can blame, is there?’