During those first few weeks after Tristan’s death, the group had pinged back together like they’d been on elastic and she realized they all felt the same. Each of them felt horribly guilty. Pippa hadn’t seen him for a couple of years and Guy even longer. Jeremy had met Tristan for a drink a few months after Nory had. Ameerah had bumped into him on the tube, and they’d promised to get together, never did; they all had a similar story. It wasn’t only with Tristan; they’d all lost touch, aside from Nory and Ameerah. Before the funeral, Nory hadn’t seen Guy since their post-graduation reunion weekend. She’d not seen Jenna or Charles for almost five years, aside from seeing Jenna on the TV. Occasionally she’d meet with Pippa but not regularly enough. She’d met Jeremy at a book festival maybe three years before Tristan’s death.

It seemed unreal that they had been so close, so tight with one another at school and even through university, and then suddenly they’d blown away in different directions, like dandelion seeds in a stiff breeze.

The worst part of all, the part that Nory couldn’t get her head around, was that Tristan wasn’t in the world anymore. It hadn’t mattered that they hadn’t seen each other from one year to the next because she’d known he was in the world somewhere. And suddenly he wasn’t. She would never see him again; that option had been removed from the universe. It was almost unbearable. How could anything be so very final? Had Nory told him how much she loved him the last time she’d seen him? She couldn’t remember. She wished she had. She knew it was selfish of her to want a neat ending, one that left her conscience unburdened. Tristan had been unable to cope with his own demons, she didn’t need to palm hers off on him as well.

Aside from the inevitable grief, Tristan’s death had reconfigured time for all of them. Suddenly there was no such thing as “all the time in the world.” They weren’t all running around in a hedonistic state of carpe diem—although Nory’s brief encounter with Guy was certainly a knee-jerk reaction to the fleetingness of life—but they each in their own way became more aware of time and its importance. Jenna and Charles stopped their decade-long dance of flirt and denial and made a commitment. Ameerah bought an apartment. Pippa started her own business. And Nory left the well-paid job that she hated and opened Serendipitous Seconds. They all vowed not to lose contact again. Apart from Guy, Nory had seen or been in contact with all of them pretty regularly ever since the funeral.