Philippa Helens … I find her. Her profile is still on here, although someone has edited it to RIP Philippa and added the years of her birth and death. It’s incredibly sad. One hundred and two friends Philippa had, in total. She wasn’t very active – her last post was over three weeks ago: a picture of a sunset that looks like a stock photo. It has a series of comments under it: ‘Cool’ and ‘Where is this, hun?’ and ‘Never mind sunsets! Dating news please!’ – she had replied to this comment with a smiley face. There are only three photos of her among all the posts. The one I saw online, on the news report; one with her in the midst of a group of laughing girls all holding cocktails; and an arty black-and-white shot of her with slicked-back hair and bare shoulders and sort of shadowy branches, like lace, all over her face and shoulders. One of those portrait shots done in a studio, I think. The sort of hideous thing I’ve avoided all my life. It is captioned, ‘Truth’.

I still want to distract myself from lists and things I don’t want to do, so I go to her Friends list and have a nose. There are lots of men and women her age: people drinking and at meals and smiling in sunglasses and posing for the camera. Young mums holding babies. Blokes atop mountains and in pubs and running in marathons. All going on with their lives without her. I scroll down, the faces all beginning to blur into one, when I stop at a photo of an older-looking man. He looks forty-something, his mouth is wide open and laughing; he has cropped hair, even teeth and a slightly crooked nose – broken, maybe? I stop because he is wearing a striking red and black Venetian mask. Clicking on his profile – Salvi Russo, he’s called – Italian? – it says he’s a performer. There’s a photo of him wearing black and balancing precariously on a beam in front of what I’m sure is St Paul’s Church at Covent Garden, and it has over a hundred likes. Indeed, he has over 3,000 friends – that’s a lot, by anyone’s standards. His posts are sporadic – photos of pints of beer on tables, a grinning selfie (sans mask, nice face, sort of cheeky) with a view of the Thames behind, a cat on a cushion – littered with comments like ‘Nice one mate’. I wonder how this man knows Philippa. If he’s an entertainer, perhaps they met at Ultra Laser; perhaps he dresses up as a clown, or something, and does kids’ parties there.