Tash’s nose wrinkles. She sighs and meets Nevis’s eye. Something there Nevis cannot read. Sympathy perhaps? ‘That sounds shit, I’m sorry. Truth is, the thing with Satnam set off bad memories from something that happened back when I was at school. Like, at the end of year nine. In the summer holidays. My sister Alice had just finished her A levels. She was down at the lido every day with her mates. There was a big group of them. Jason, Sam, Fran, a few others, I can’t remember all the names. After the lido closed they used to come round to our house ’cos my mum didn’t care if they drank and smoked. Anyway, one morning the caretaker at the lido went in early to open up and found Jason at the bottom of the pool. He’d tied a gym kettle to his ankle. The next day Sam’s parents find Sam hanging from a tree at the bottom of his garden. Then Fran turns up in a local picnic spot having taken a load of pills. It was just like a hurricane hit or a tsunami or something. Alice broke down. She didn’t go to uni that year, she didn’t do anything for months except watch TV. She’s still a lost girl.’

‘That’s awful. Did they ever get to the bottom of it?’

‘Suicide contagion.’

‘Like an epidemic?’

‘I guess. They’ve always happened. Sometimes they call them copycat suicides. It’s young people mostly, you know, after some rock star or celebrity or whatever kills themselves, or sometimes just randomly, like with Alice’s friends. Nobody really knows why.’ Tash puts her beer down on the side table.

‘Like a cult?’

‘One that no one realises they’re in until it’s too late.’

‘But there’s no evidence anyone else is going to try to kill themselves, is there?’

‘No, no, I just… I suppose I thought you and Satnam are really close so she might have told you…’ She tails off.

‘Told me what?’

‘Forget it.’

Nevis sits back in her chair, her hands grinding together in her lap. On the chair beside her, Tash, yawning and fiddling with her hair, says, ‘Look, I really need to get some sleep, so…’

Determined not to leave until she has what she came for, Nevis brings up on her phone the Valentine’s Day picture of Tash with Satnam and another girl. Tash peers at it for a moment or two, her breath quickening.

‘Is this what you thought Satnam might have told me about? It was taken here, wasn’t it?’ Nevis says steadily. The moment she entered the living room, she’d spotted the sofa in the picture.

‘One of my flatmates had a Valentine’s Day party. So what?’