He smiled and sipped his coffee. I felt cross and tired and blurry, and his insistent cheeriness was irritating, like music playing too loudly. “We’ve been having a conference,” he said.

“We?”

“The usual suspects. I was the one delegated to come and see you. Well, I delegated myself, really.”

“It’s the chart, isn’t it?” I said. “I should have put it in a cupboard.”

“We’ve not been looking after you properly,” he said.

“Everyone’s been looking after me,” I said. “You came to my birthday party. I’ve been invited to dinner. People have put up with my deranged behavior.”

“You’ve not been deranged,” said Fergus.

“I’m just going through the stages of mourning: anger, bargaining, denial. Lots of denial.” I paused. “Are they really the stages of mourning or are they the stages of dying? It doesn’t matter. I think I’ve had enough help. Maybe it’s time now to help myself.”

“I’m not allowed to take no for an answer,” said Fergus.

“Says who?”

“Says me and Gwen and Joe and Mary and no doubt other people as well.”

“This is since the party?” I said.

“Some of it was at the party. But the lines have been buzzing as well.”

“I wish people would just talk to me.”

“I am talking to you.”

“So what’s the plan? Is someone going to take me to the seaside? Are you clubbing together to pay for a massage?”

“You shouldn’t be sarcastic,” said Fergus. “It’s the lowest form of wit. The immediate plan is for you to eat your muffin, then show me around your house.”

“You know what it looks like.”

“Please, eat up.”

I nibbled at the muffin, feeling like a child who had been told off. It was dry in my mouth, hard to swallow. “I don’t need all this help,” I said. “I shouldn’t need it. He was your friend. You knew him much longer than I did. Losing him must have been as bad for you as it was for me, maybe worse.”

Fergus looked reflective. “I don’t think I’ll ever have a friend like him again. I couldn’t. It was something about who’d seen me drunk and being embarrassing, at my low points.” He smiled. “And there were good things as well. Trips, girlfriends . . . Well, I probably shouldn’t go there. Anyway, this isn’t a competition.”

“I should be looking out for you,” I said.

“First things first,” said Fergus. “That’ll do. That’s enough muffin. Let’s go upstairs.”

As I walked upstairs with him, I suddenly remembered being about seventeen and my mum coming into my bedroom. “You’re meant to have tidied your room,” she would say.

“I have tidied it,” I’d say.

“Well, it doesn’t look like it.”