She waited for him to go. Even passing Alex’s closed door had been comforting when they were alone at Holford Road. She had liked knowing he was there. Sometimes he’d let her in, and play her music or show her his English essays. It seemed so recent. Now she waited, knocked, and then went in.

She switched on the anglepoise. The LED bulb was ghostly, shining on his unmade bed. She leaned against the closed door and looked slowly around the room. A small desk under the window was covered with handwritten pages. His books were stacked on the desk and floor. Camus and Simone Weil, furry with bookmarks. Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, The Way of the Sufi. She crossed the room and looked down from the window at the top of the new car and the weedy gravel, then back to the unmade bed. She realised her mother had lain there more recently than Alex. She wished she could forget. The books on the desk were worn and soft and solid. They were like promises of freedom. She looked through the pages. Some of them were turned down in the corners, passages underlined, or bordered with strong vertical lines. Simone Weil:

The only way into truth is through one’s own annihilation, she read.

He had circled it, in fine black ink, and then in blue. Beneath that book was another, splayed open with a broken spine.

The death before death. Fana. Ego death. Underlined twice.

She looked at the cover. Rumi: Bridge to the Soul. Underneath was a writing pad. He had copied the words out and underlined them.

The annihilation of the self. The death of the ego. To lose –

The line ended with a scrawled dash, a breaking-off in pain or boredom, a green biro mark, strong, then fading, then gone. She put the books back, the Simone Weil on the top, as he had left them.

Cocaine, weed, wine, whisky, medication, meditation, philosophy and prayer. Alex had tried to escape himself all his life. Now, he was erased. How had it felt, his death, when the tractor hit the car? Was it only losing consciousness like any other blackout, or did his body see it coming? Had it fought? Help me. Not this. Not now. Distress. Distress. She looked down at the pages; the words and words and words, the small efforts of his pen denting the paper.

Dan knocked on the door and came in.

‘It’s like a monk’s cell,’ she said.

Dan looked at all the bottles.

‘Probably,’ he said.

‘Do you think Alex killed himself?’ It was amazing the things she heard come out of her mouth. ‘Do you think he was dead before the accident?’

It was too big a thing to answer quickly. He left a pause.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m sure they’ll tell you, when they know.’