Farok hesitates for a second as if trying to decide whether this ride is way above his pay grade. He turns back to the dashboard and glances at her in the rear-view mirror and – miracle – a look of resolution is on his face. He’s decided this one is worth doing.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘We’ll go very fast.’

As they speed up the hill towards Clifton she calls Satnam’s number again, but the device goes to voicemail. What if it’s too late? Oh God, please no. This is like solving an equation, Nevis tells herself, perhaps the most complicated, challenging equation you have ever been asked to solve. There will be a point where you can take one of several different pathways. Only one of these pathways will lead to the correct solution. You have to think it through. You have to get it right.

But how? She does not have all the parameters. This isn’t the Satnam that she knows. This is not the friend who sits on her bed and watches crap telly or the friend who called out the wanker who thought it was funny to spray-paint ‘Mentalist’ on Nevis’s daypack. This isn’t the friend who dreams of becoming a medical researcher, the girl who is determined to marry for love whatever her parents might think. It’s not the girl who jogs even when it’s raining and is always happy to share her chips. But perhaps the Satnam on the bridge is the same Satnam who says she’s going to the library but never seems to be there, the friend who has lost weight recently but says she hasn’t, the one who cries in her bedroom and once – recently – threatened to leave Avon University. Perhaps this Satnam has secrets.

People are complicated. Satnam is complicated. If only people were as simple as mathematics.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Nevis says, to no one in particular. The person she would normally ask in a situation like this is Satnam. Because Satnam has everyday, ordinary, practical smarts. Nevis has maths smarts as well as knowing a great deal about river birds. But Nevis has no people smarts. I am useless, she thinks.

Farok doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know either. Of course he doesn’t. He has no idea. In any case, he’s doing what he can, which is driving really very fast across the northern edges of the city towards Clifton. Farok is looking at Nevis in the rear-view mirror. He also seems terribly concerned.

I can’t speak, Nevis thinks, the words have gone. There is just wire wool in my throat where sentences should be. Who can I text to help me?

She pulls out her phone. There are so few numbers in her contacts. There is Honor of course but they haven’t really spoken in months, not since Nevis found the letter.

Chapter 2

Honor