Tears fill my eyes as I press my face against my aunt’s big shoulder and smell the mousse in her crispy perm. Without Becca I’ll feel totally alone, but perhaps I’ll be able to think for myself. Maybe things will be clearer. We hug loosely, her body skinny and cool compared to her mum’s, and she squeezes my wrist, like a signal of solidarity.

Then it’s just Mum and me, like it always used to be. Except I still feel echoes of Nick. I still jump at tall shadows, hear the jangle of his keys, catch phantom drifts of frying bacon in the air.

We rarely mention his name, which is weird in itself. But he’s still around.

One Friday evening, Mum comes into my room. It’s stripped of Becca’s things now: I can pad right across my carpet without having to stretch over her sleeping bag, and my books have resurfaced from beneath her heaps of fashion magazines. Her meds no longer sit on the bedside table; they haven’t been there since the day after Nick died, when Becca whisked them away as if getting them out of sight would solve everything.

Mum stands on the spot where Becca slept for almost three weeks. Spreads her arms as if suddenly noticing all the extra space.

Releasing a breath, she says, “I’ve arranged for you to have Monday off school.”

“Monday?”

“Nick’s funeral.”

An uncomfortable silence falls. I think she’s going to walk away, but she lingers near the door. “I’m nervous,” she says eventually.

“About the funeral?”

“I don’t know why. Maybe the thought of all those people. And I still feel so . . . I mean, funerals are supposed to give closure, aren’t they? But we won’t really have that. Not until we know why it happened.”

I blurt: “What’s the toxicology report for?”

“To test for anything he might’ve had in his system. The doctors think he had some kind of reaction.”

“Like an allergic reaction?”

She plucks at her cardigan. “Possibly.”

“Could it be . . .” I know I should stop but I can’t. “. . . his antidepressants?”

“How do you know about those?”

“I heard you and Auntie Rach.”

There’s a pinched look to her face. The blue disks under her eyes resemble bruises, making me wonder if the real ones on her body are still there, whether they’re fading now, faster than the memories.

“They’re not sure,” she says quietly. “The analysis takes a while when they don’t really know what they’re testing for.”

It’s one of the longest conversations we’ve had since he died. Part of me wants to keep it going—I’ve missed her and I don’t want her to leave. Another part fears that if we keep talking, I’ll tell her everything.

She moves to go.

“Was he in pain?”

I didn’t mean to say it.