I’m hit with a memory, except it feels like a dream. Not a pleasant one. A disjointed conversation with Giles, the neighbour from the second-floor flat. I think I was drunk. That fog of screw-top wine I’d hibernated into during the days that followed. I was taking the recycling out. Or a bin. And I was wearing one of Jack’s t-shirts with no jeans or leggings, just my bare legs, unshaven and so white they could reflect the hot London sun. Giles called my name. No; he tapped me on the shoulder. I was aware of my wine breath, my unbrushed teeth. ‘Did you see it in the Metro?’ he’d asked. His voice was calm, clipped, kind. I said, yeah. Or nodded. I can’t recall. But I didn’t indulge. Of course, I hadn’t seen anything in the Metro. ‘It’s such a tragedy,’ Giles had said. ‘Nobody to blame.’ I can’t remember how I got back into the flat, how I said goodbye. If I said it at all.

‘I blame the driver,’ I say to Freddie.

He narrows his eyes and drops open his mouth, glaring at me. Without words, his whole expression tells me he’s deeply offended by what I’ve just said. I retreat, break his gaze, but I know he’s still staring at me, burning holes into my skin with his disgust. What have I done? What have I said?

‘You’re sick,’ Freddie whispers.

‘What? Why?’

‘You blame the driver?’

‘Well – erm – yeah, and why? Don’t … you? Or, clearly not. Erm—’

‘He wasn’t obese! Never smoked! To all intents and purposes, he was healthy, happy, and then the Grim Reaper came along, didn’t he? Ooh, decided to pick him. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.’ And Freddie turns his hand into a pistol, pointing it directly at my forehead. ‘Boom!’

I jolt, intimidated.

‘Boom! BOOM!’ Freddie continues, spitting as he speaks. ‘And that decision wiped out the driver’s son, and, of course, my big brother. So yeah, I could blame him; the big fucking Grim. But no therapist is gonna help me through that shit, are they? Ha! Ha, ha. What could they tell me? That I’m in the same boat as every other living person? Pissed off at death? Death himself. Or herself. I’m not sexist, you know. I’m not. Death is as likely to be a she as a he. Unless! Unless Death is neither. Nothing. But it must be something. Something that’s nothing couldn’t make us feel so bad, could it?’

I’ll be honest, Freddie lost me somewhere around ‘healthy’ and ‘Grim Reaper’.

‘Who was healthy?’ I ask meekly, a croak in my throat. ‘The driver?’

‘BOOM!’

‘Look, you’ve confused me and I just want to understand. Please?’

‘B-b-b-boom!’