‘Long time no see.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know where to start, Zaid. You’d talk for me, if you could. If you were really here. I wish I knew what you would say. I imagine it, sometimes. I guess what you’d tell me to do, what you’d think. When I’m picking an outfit or trying to decide something, there’s this voice in my head, and I always tell myself that it’s you, that you’re still with me. But how could that possibly be true, when I didn’t even really know you when you were alive?’

The late-afternoon sun was on her shoulders, seeping through the cotton of her dress. She looked up at the sky, bright and brilliantly blue.

‘I wish I’d known you as well as I always told myself that I did. I wish I hadn’t spent the last sixteen years comparing every single friend I made to you and always finding that they came out wanting. Lissy’s my friend. I never wanted you to meet because I knew you’d think she was boring. I thought that, too. But she’s not. She’s kind. She drove us all the way here so that I could talk to you, and she’s looking after my baby so that I can sit here and tell you – tell you what? I don’t know what to tell you. That I’m angry with you, I suppose. I’m angry that you didn’t tell me that you wanted Rav, or that he wanted you. Angry that you slept with him all those times when you knew I was falling in love with him. Even angrier that you didn’t tell me what he did. I know it wasn’t your fault. I know it was him. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive him.

‘You weren’t kind to me. You know that? You weren’t kind. And you weren’t a good friend. I’ve spent all these years trying to convince myself that you did like me and that I was important and that you did respect me, because I thought that if you didn’t it said something about me, that I was too suburban, too boring, too provincial, too unspecial to be worthy of your friendship. But it wasn’t that, was it? It wasn’t about me. It was about you. You couldn’t be my friend, not properly, because you didn’t know how to treat people. You didn’t know how to treat Max, or me, or anyone in your life.