As Keane carries on talking, Cullen stares at the coffee machine. The flatmate’s name rings a bell. Ah yes. The quirky, quiet one? Always wears the same uniform of striped tee and jeans. Aware, suddenly, of the silence in the room, he says, ‘Biosciences can be a very challenging degree.’

‘We can’t have undergrads trying to take their own lives.’ The shocked tone in Keane’s voice suggests rebuke.

‘No, no, obviously not,’ Cullen says, holding the cup precisely under the coffee spout. His hand is shaking, just a little. All it would take is a quick snifter to make it stop. He reaches around the back of the coffee machine where he keeps a sneaky quarter bottle of Famous Grouse, then decides against it. The risk of Keane spotting him doing it or smelling the booze and telling the higher-ups is too great. Instead he drops a sugar cube into his cup and watches the tarry liquid seep into it, his mind automatically turning back to last night with Veronica, the whole business not that much different from inserting a capsule, pressing the on button and waiting for an espresso to be expelled. He takes a sip from his cup and is relieved by the sense of the scattered fragments of his mind gathering back in.

‘I’m not sure we’re getting the whole story at this point,’ Keane says.

He feels his hand slip on the cup. ‘No?’

‘Well no, obviously, there’s a reason why Satnam decided to do what she did, we just don’t know what it is.’

Taking the coffee to his desk and resuming his seat, Cullen clears his throat and does his best not to sound alarmed. He doesn’t like the way this sounds. ‘Has somebody checked her phone?’

‘It seems to have gone missing.’

Cullen’s heart skips. ‘Temporarily missing or permanently missing?’

‘According to the flatmate, it got left in the ambulance, but the crew couldn’t find it so I’m guessing it must have fallen out when they opened up the ambulance.’

Cullen is weak-kneed with relief. ‘Naturally I took a look at her social media timelines and so on. Nothing alarming or untoward. In fact, she hardly seems to have used social media this academic year. The most recent post was a picture of her at a Valentine’s Day party with three other girls and she looked perfectly fine. But then I don’t know her, so…’

Cullen sits and blinks and wonders how best to make this all go away. Too many disordered thoughts swirling around. Probably shouldn’t have had that third coffee.

‘Perhaps it was just an accident. Students buy prescription drugs on the street all the time, drink too much, get wasted,’ he says, hoping to sound rational and steady, neither of which he really feels.

Keane blinks, her face registering surprise. ‘I’m not sure anyone takes as many pills as Satnam evidently did by accident.’