Alastair is looking at me. Steam from our drinks blurs the air between us. He says, very quietly, very slowly: ‘That was Sarah? My Sarah?’

‘Yes.’ It feels as though the room around me is spinning. I wish that I had slept more last night. I’m not at my best at all.

‘You’re going to have to give me a minute,’ Alastair says.

The canteen suddenly seems busier, noisier than ever. The racket sets my body on edge. I should tell him about the email Sarah sent me and the fact that I knew her, years before, but suddenly I find that I can’t. Suddenly, I feel horribly, horribly responsible. The look on Alastair’s face is awful.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry to have come here and told you this.’

Alastair shakes his head. ‘I’d have wanted to know. I’m just … it just … I feel so awful. I mean, I feel sick. I think I’m in shock.’

I don’t know what to do. Didn’t I know this might happen? I try not to move a single muscle. Maybe he will simply want me to go away. Maybe he will get angry with me, shout at me, tell me I’m a terrible person for coming here. I clench my jaw, preparing myself for any possibility. But in the end, Alastair just lets out a long, shaky breath.

‘We got together,’ he says, his voice a little unsteady, ‘when she was in her second year. She would have been – what – twenty then? I was twenty-two. She was my first … proper girlfriend.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘She must have really meant so much to you.’

He gives a small nod. ‘She did.’

‘Can I … can I ask how you met?’

‘Oh …’ Alastair smiles, faintly. ‘In a coffee shop. She was at the till and twenty pence short for her hot chocolate. I lent her the change. We started chatting … and that was that. We saw each other all the time from then on. We were together eleven months in the end.’

‘You were so close. And eleven months … You know, I’m glad. I’m glad she had someone who cared about her like that.’ My voice sounds waterlogged, thick to my ears. ‘And … her friends? Did you meet them, the other people in her life?’