‘That’s Jessica with the two of you, right?’ Tash peers, too obviously wanting to get it right. She knows more than she’s saying, Nevis thinks.

‘Yeah. Jessica Easton. She’s in the year above us. I hardly know her either.’ Biting her lip and turning her head away, Tash says, ‘Look, I’m pretty tired, so…’

‘The morning after that I found Satnam at the kitchen table, crying.’

Nevis watches Tash’s expression change. Untucking her legs and rising from her seat, she says, ‘I told you, I hardly knew Satnam. How would I know why she would have been crying?’ There’s a pause. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘I just thought…’

‘Well don’t,’ Tash snaps. ‘You’re shit at it.’ But she sits back down and taking out a clump of tobacco, dumps it into a paper. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’ Nevis watches her elegant, manicured fingers roll herself a cigarette. ‘You want one? It’s only tobacco.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Sunday night, before she… went to the bridge, she said she was thinking of leaving Avon. Later, at the bridge, she told me she’d had enough.’

Tash frowns and reaching over the table taps her rollie of ashes. She leans forward, the frown disappearing and the eyes turning inward, as if on the brink of some revelation, then, leaning back, she says, ‘We’ve all felt like that sometimes, haven’t we?’

‘Did something happen at that Valentine’s Day party?’

Tash shrugs and in a flat, empty voice says, ‘Like I said, I was pissed.’

‘You didn’t say that.’

‘Well, I’m saying it now.’ She raises her eyes and sees Tash watching her, flushed and a little flustered. ‘You think Satnam is some kind of mathematical equation and all you have to do is solve her and she’ll wake up, is that it?’

‘Yes,’ says Nevis.

A peal of laughter escapes Tash’s lips. ‘You’re hilarious.’

She takes the smoke into her lungs and holds it there for a moment before letting it out in rings. ‘You’ve looked at her phone, obviously.’

‘I don’t know the passcode.’

‘Bummer.’ The rings grow smaller.

‘We had a bit of a spat on Sunday evening and I left and went to the library. If I hadn’t gone…’

Tash tilts her head and narrows her eyes. A frown appears on her otherwise smooth forehead. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘I was upset that she was saying she wanted to leave.’

‘She probably just meant she was looking forward to graduating.’

‘Maybe.’ Perhaps this is all just about me, Nevis thinks, the way I don’t seem to be able to understand people. ‘But she also told me Luke broke up with her… but Luke said it was the other way around. She cheated on Luke and then dumped him.’

‘One of them was lying, obviously. People lie all the time, Nevis.’