‘Thinner, I guess. Gaunt. I figured that she wasn’t sleeping properly – that she was on different, stronger pills – but I never knew for sure.’ He drew a finger down the condensation on his glass, and then looked at Jo again. ‘I started to worry that maybe she’d got in with the wrong crowd. There were a bunch of kids working there who’d dropped out at the same time as Martina did, and not all of them were …’ He stopped, grimaced, looked at his mom. ‘I’m starting to sound real preachy.’

‘You’re saying they were a bad influence on her?’

‘All I know is some of those kids, they were pretty wild at high school, and not always in a fun way. So I remember being surprised.’

‘Surprised she would hang out with them?’

‘Sure, yeah. They would never have hung out together at high school.’

‘You got names?’

‘I think one of them was called Jessie.’ Vale frowned. ‘There was another guy who worked there who was in our year. Clark maybe – or that could have been his surname. I’m sorry. I never talked to those guys. I didn’t talk to anyone, really.’

‘How come?’

He opened out his hands, palms facing up.

‘You’d have to ask all the kids who would call me names and never want a single thing to do with me.’ It was said without rancour, but it was obvious it still hurt. ‘But, you know, I understood. I was a nerd. I wanted to do well at school, I wanted to be a lawyer. I was interested in things like politics and history. Without sounding conceited, I could have got on to the football team if I’d really wanted it; I was a pretty good centre, I could have been a jock – I mean, look at the size of me – but none of that interested me. I think the fact that I actively shunned sports set other kids against me. I was the loner. I never had anyone to hang around with.’ He glanced at his mother, who looked more pained at this admission than he did. ‘I’ve always wanted to go and study abroad somewhere,’ he said, ‘even for a short time. I’d love to see London, Paris, the Italian cities, but you say those things out loud at high school and you get called a fag; and not just once – over and over again, on repeat. You paint a target on your back. So I kept myself to myself.’