Three thousand friends … how does that even happen? Everyone’s got more friends than me, I think. I have none – in real life – but that’s OK. Friends have not been a good thing for me. Either they betray you or you betray them – or they steal your heart, without even knowing it, and refuse to give it back.

I come off Facebook and go to help Dad set the table. I don’t want things to change. Despite Verity Holmes and Dad’s list and other people living their best lives with millions of friends, and others ending theirs because they can’t see a way forward, except into the path of a speeding train … I want things to stay as they are, as stagnant as the algae on Camden’s waterways. I want unwanted memories to be swept from my mind like stubborn weeds from the brickwork of the canal. I want stillness and calm, and for my blank heart to remain undisturbed.

I wander into the kitchen to get the salt and pepper and I chuck a little prayer out to the un-listening universe.

Can’t things just stay the same?

CHAPTER 9

‘Primrose Hill,’ said Dad, over a breakfast of fruit and Greek yoghurt this morning.

‘What about it?’ I replied, suddenly studying the contents of my plate like I was a forensic scientist.

‘It’s the first place on my list,’ said Dad. ‘Shall we go this morning?’

‘What time?’ I muttered.

‘Ten?’

‘Ten? That’s a bit early.’

‘What else do you have planned?’

‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘Ten it is, then.’

I couldn’t muster faking any enthusiasm. I couldn’t fake pretending I wanted to walk the sweltering fifteen minutes to Primrose Hill with my father on a Friday morning while he grunted and uttered monosyllabic complaints; while he asked me to describe what I could see and I told him that I could see posh shops and nice trees and people sitting outside cafés on Regent’s Park Road nursing coffees and pains au chocolat. I attempted to become his eyes, again, but I couldn’t fake enthusiasm for this miserable jaunt when I want to hide, safe and unseen, in the flat and not put myself out there for inspection from the world and reflection in faces more normal than mine.

There’s a bloke staring at me now. He’s sitting on the bench closest to us at the top of Primrose Hill and staring at my face, despite its robust cover of make-up, like there’s something about it that doesn’t sit quite right with him. I resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him or, worse, alert the other inhabitants of Primrose Hill this morning – with a yell, possibly – that yes, he may have a normal face, unlike mine, but he also has a monstrous beer belly and a terrible haircut. Maybe he doesn’t sit right with me.