A few days afterwards Barbara gave me the following account. ‘I’m not quite sure why I did this,’ she said gently, ‘but perhaps, one day, you’ll be glad to have this reminder.’

I didn’t hear Conrad come back up the stairs. I had the oddest feeling of foreboding, and the moment I saw him I realised why. There were no tears, his face was perfectly composed, but it was completely lifeless, empty. He was moving like a sleep walker. He stopped just inside the doorway. I stood up and stepped closer to him.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

His voice, when he spoke, was a tiny sound coming from lips that barely seemed to move. ‘He didn’t say what happened to David.’

‘Who didn’t? Who’s David? Conrad, is it your family?’

He was looking at me but there was no recognition in his eyes. ‘She must have been driving. That must be it. Guy said she was hopeless. He sh— he shouldn’t have let her. Why did he let her? What was he thinking of?’

His face contorted suddenly; it seemed to crack apart. ‘Guy, you stupid FUCKING BASTARD!!’ He raised his fists high in the air, almost as if he was going to bring them down on me, but he twisted and threw himself against the edge of his bed. He knelt there, his body bent over the bed, thrashing his fists against the mattress and screaming. Wiltrud appeared in the doorway; I motioned her away.

After a little while he was quiet. I walked over and slowly sat beside him. He stirred slightly but didn’t look up. I could hear his laboured breathing.

There was no need to ask him what had happened; if I didn’t know the details, the important facts were clear enough. His cup of tea stood, untouched, on the desk. I considered trying to get him to drink it, anything to help to bring him back, but I knew it was not yet time. Then my eye fell on his photographs of her, and particularly the one of us together. I remembered her then, hanging on my shoulder, slightly tipsy, teasing him and so obviously in the first stages of falling in love, and I found I couldn’t prevent myself from bursting into tears. Something in me whispered that I should be stronger, for him, but I don’t think strength would have done him any good at that moment. I bent my head and wept, as quietly as I could.

I thought about Robert Blackman; I couldn’t even imagine the pain he must feel. I wondered what he would do, what point he could find in going on. For a moment I thought I should try to reach him, to speak to him, but I realised it would be almost impossible. And my place was clearly with Conrad.

I’m not sure how long we sat there. Every so often he would catch his breath, as if he wanted to speak, but each time he would shudder and say nothing.

Eventually, moved by something I didn’t understand but didn’t stop to question, I bent over him and laid my head on the back of his, holding him. He shuddered again.

‘If I’m creating my own universe I can bring her back, can’t I? I can make it so this didn’t happen.’

I didn’t know what to say. His voice was stronger now, with a kind of deadly calm.

‘I think you know…’ I couldn’t go on for a moment and had to stop to regain my composure. ‘I think you know it doesn’t work like that.’

His head shifted, and I sat up. He turned to look at me, his face pale and blotched with the stains of his tears. ‘How does it work, then? Explain it to me one more time. Tell me I’ve got everything I need to make me fucking happy!’

I couldn’t prevent tears from starting to my eyes again, simply because of the pain I saw there. I shook my head. ‘You won’t hear me if I try to tell you now, and…and I couldn’t say it, anyway.’ I swallowed. ‘Didn’t I tell you words aren’t enough?’

His head turned and he stared ahead of him at the bottom of the wall. ‘You’ve got to say something. Anything. It doesn’t matter what it is.’ His breath hissed against his teeth. ‘I can’t stand it.’

I laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. ‘If I get you some tea, will you drink it? Promise me that, and I’ll try…I’ll try to talk to you.’

After a moment he nodded tightly.

In the kitchen Wiltrud was simply standing by the window, looking out at the darkened street. ‘There was another call,’ she said. ‘Two young ladies. Uh…Roxie and—’

‘Vee, yes. I know them. What did they say?’

She turned to me and her eyes were brimming. ‘Ach, it is so unfair. So young, and with so much spirit. And Conrad..! I should telephone his mother and father, but I do not know what to say. They never met Caroline; I do not think they could know what this will mean.’ She looked at me bleakly and her hands came together. ‘You will talk to him, ja? Tell him about God, about His mercy.’

‘I’m not sure if that’s what he wants to hear at the moment. I wouldn’t blame him. Nothing I can say will make this seem any less painful.’

When I came back with the tea he was sitting on the floor, his back against the bed. He was clutching the copy of the Gita that George Harrison had given him, curling it in his fist. He brandished it at me. ‘Show me,’ he practically snarled. ‘Show me something in this that will make sense of…show me something so I can understand.’

I put the tea on the table and looked at him for a second. Then I went to him and reached for the book. ‘All right, if you think—’

‘No!!’ He twisted and threw the book with tremendous force; it flew onto the landing and fluttered through the banisters. I heard it hit the stairs.

He was on his feet. ‘No! I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want anything! I don’t want anything, except…’ he stopped, his breathing ragged. His voice twisted into a sob. ‘…Except for her to be alive again…’

I faced him, trying to control my own sorrow. We were about two feet apart. ‘You promised me you’d drink some tea.’

His face twitched, his eyes narrowing; it was as if he wanted to lash out again but couldn’t articulate what he was feeling. Then he went to his bed and sat down, his shoulders hunched.

I got the tea and sat beside him. I held his cup in front of him and eventually he took it. At first he rested it on his lap but finally he lifted it to his mouth and took a sip.

‘T-try to taste the tea,’ I murmured. ‘Try to remember—’

‘You’re lucky I don’t throw it in your fucking face.’ Then he looked at me, immediately contrite, and the tears came again. I saved his cup before he dropped it and put it on the floor, taking him in my arms.

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered after a while. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t…I just don’t know what to do. It hurts so much…’

‘I know.’ I pulled his head against my cheek. ‘It doesn’t matter. Caro was worth all the tears you have. There’s no easy way through this. You…just have to hang on.’ I desperately wanted to talk to him, to try to persuade him that he had lost nothing, that on the contrary he was so lucky to have met her at all during her short life – but I knew none of it would mean anything to him. If he reads this, perhaps the words will make some sense now. Or perhaps not. Words are tiny, dry, useless things, after all. They touch almost nothing of what it means to live and die. But most of the time they’re all we have.

We sat for several hours. Wiltrud brought more tea, and some soup, but Conrad couldn’t get past the first mouthful. Eventually I persuaded him to get into bed and try to sleep. We telephoned his employer and told him what had happened; he was very understanding, and told me to convey his best wishes to Conrad, and for him not to worry about coming to work until he was ready.

Conrad lay quietly, not responding as I gave him the message. His eyes glistened again; perhaps it was the kindness from an unexpected quarter.

I stood by the bed, unwilling to leave him. After about a minute I asked:

‘Do you want me to stay? I mean, do you want me to lay with you? You might not want to feel you’re alone…’

‘I am alone,’ he said. After a few seconds he added: ‘Thanks. But it won’t make any difference. Tell…tell Mrs Muller I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘Uh…I don’t know. Screaming and shouting. Throwing sacred books. Anything I’ve ever done. For existing.’

I looked down at him sadly. But I decided any more words would be better in the morning. I went towards the door.

‘Barbara.’

He didn’t often use my name; he once told me that between good friends it seemed unnecessary, almost an insult. I felt an odd sort of shiver to hear him say the word now. I turned on the threshold. ‘Yes?’

‘Stay with me.’

‘I can’t see me loving nobody but you, for all my life…

When you’re with me baby the skies’ll be blue, for all my life…’

‘Happy Together’, The Turtles

‘Then I saw her face; now I’m a believer…’

‘I’m A Believer’, The Monkees

‘True Love must be the greatest thing

‘Long Live Love’, Sandie Shaw

I write those lyrics as a kind of test; can I look at those words without crying? I can’t, yet; and the happy songs are the worst, somehow. Ridiculous how that crap resonates when it has the slightest relevance. So much for words having no power.

She lay beside me all that night; when I woke up her face was inches from mine. Perhaps it was a mistake, that last plea; as soon as I saw her I remembered, and the tears came flooding again. I practically made myself ill, over those first two days.

She was amazing. Just when you would have expected her to go on endlessly about her beliefs she kept quiet. She knew I wasn’t in the mood, I guess. But she was always there, and always ready to talk about anything I wanted. Mrs Muller was great, too. And even my parents visited; they couldn’t really think of anything to say, but I saw that they wanted to help. Dennis phoned, then called round. That was difficult; he felt partly responsible because of what had happened with the band – would she have gone if he’d been firmer with Rob, and so on. Crazily enough, I found myself telling him it was meant to be – and I found I almost believed it, too. It made me wonder, again, why I had been so scared to go myself.

My first idea had been wrong. Guy would never have been idiotic enough to let her drive, particularly in that situation. As far as they could make out, it was most likely the other driver’s fault. He was dead, too, him and two children in the back. So was David.

In some ways the most shocking news was that Caro had survived for two hours after the crash. They cut her out and rushed her to hospital; she regained consciousness, but said nothing and died just about the time her father’s plane landed. They had been on the way to meet him.

Blackman surprised me. When I saw him he was obviously almost destroyed, but he had found strength from somewhere. He spoke very little, and most of it was obviously intended to comfort me, to convince me how much Caro had cared.

The funeral was strained. There were so many people there, and I guessed most of them attended for Blackman’s sake. There was only a scattering of people of my age. Vee and Roxie were among them, of course; I couldn’t face standing by the grave, couldn’t control myself at all, so the three of us sat at the back, just sobbing. In some ways that was the most awful time of all. Maybe it’s those occasions when you finally realise they’re not coming back. Ever.

And afterwards, listening to Roxie talk about how Caro had expended so much breath deriding Donovan as a cheap Dylan imitator, then had talked to him for an hour about song-writing when they had met at one of Brian Epstein’s parties...(Guy, it turned out, had been quite a close friend of Epstein’s, and Patti Harrison was there at the funeral.) I was hungry for anything they could tell me about her, but at some point in every story Roxie would burst into tears, and after a while we tried to talk about other things.

When the mourners had begun to depart, Blackman came over to me. He was pale but in control of himself. He pulled a small envelope from his jacket.

‘One of the Turkish nurses was with Caro at the end. She told me…how it was. I got her to write it down, and I’ve had it translated. I thought you might like to read it.’

‘Thanks. Mr Blackman, I’m…sorry. About Guy, too.’

He nodded. ‘Is Barbara here?’

I knew she was present, but she had stayed in the background. At the moment, I couldn’t see her. I gestured vaguely. ‘Um…she’s around.’

‘She’s…still at your address?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then please tell her I’ll call her soon. And thank her for the letter she sent me.’ After a moment he extended his hand. I took it and he gripped my fingers tightly. ‘Perhaps you might like to come to the house sometime…to look at the library.’

There was suddenly something in my throat. ‘I…I’m not sure I could stand it, Mr Blackman. Maybe… later.’

‘I understand.’ He moved away, joining a knot of smartly-dressed men who were obviously waiting for him.

Barbara appeared at my side. ‘He wanted to talk to you,’ I said.

‘I thought he might. I just couldn’t face it today. I think…I think he’s looking for some sort of answer from me, and today, I just couldn’t even begin to provide it.’

I looked at her; she had been crying. I hadn’t thought about her during the funeral but now I wondered why she had kept out of sight since we arrived. ‘Where were you?’

‘I…went for a walk. I…I suppose I was thinking of my father, and how I never got to say a proper goodbye to him. That, and…and Caro…well, it became too much for me.’

I shook my head. ‘Don’t you think it makes nonsense of all this Advaita – things like this? How can you argue that we have no individual existence? We just…we just buried two extraordinary individuals.’

She looked into my eyes; whatever she saw there changed the response she gave me. ‘We can’t talk about it now,’ she said. ‘If you’re ready, let’s go home.’

Saying good bye to Vee and Roxie was harder than I would have imagined possible; in some ways the most difficult part of the day. It felt like I was closing the last door on Caro. Blackman had paid for a taxi to take us all the way home; after the girls had gone Barbara and I sat without speaking for the rest of the journey.

Mrs Muller made us tea when we got in, then retired discreetly. We sat in front of the fire, unspeaking, for what seemed like a very long time.

Then from nowhere I was prompted to say: ‘Blackman told me you wrote him a letter. What did you say?’

‘It…it was a standard letter of condolence, really. Just a few things about Guy and Caro, about how much I liked them both. More or less what I said to him that New Year’s Eve, as far as I remember.’

‘And you didn’t tell him that nothing was born, so nothing died?’

‘I’m sorry...?’

‘Isn’t that what the Gita says – somewhere in chapter two? I looked at it yesterday.’

‘Krishna talks about the Self being beyond birth and death, certainly, but—’

‘And something about the wise man not mourning for the dead?’

‘Or the living.’ She looked at me, her face set. ‘Conrad, I don’t want to get into an argument about this. It’s not worth it. I understand how you feel at the moment; I know that the things I’ve been telling you sound even further removed from reality than the adventures I had with Ian and the Doctor. I’ll talk to you about it, if you want. But I don’t think you’re in a very receptive frame of mind, and I don’t want us to fall out over it.’

I could not hold her gaze and I dropped my eyes. ‘What I keep thinking,’ I said haltingly, ‘is "what if I’d gone?" Maybe they wouldn’t have been on the road at that time, maybe my presence would have changed the route they took or the time they left or…or anything. At first I thought that I was meant to survive, that was why I didn’t go. Now I think I might have failed them, might have killed them…’

‘You know there’s no point in thinking like that.’

‘But I can’t help it!’ I sat up straight on the settee, my hands balled tight. ‘If I hadn’t been such a fucking…a fucking…’ I couldn’t find a word, and I turned away from her.

Her hand came to rest on my shoulder.

‘I’m…sorry,’ I said. ‘I know you’re right. But I can’t let it go, can’t leave it alone…’ I felt the tears welling again, and I fought to control them. Her arms were around me suddenly, as if she could tell, and my control shattered.

After a while she murmured: ‘It’s all right. It’s a truism, I know, but this will pass. You’ll never forget her – how could you – but one day only the good memories will matter.’

For a few seconds I said nothing as I mastered my aching throat. ‘Do…do you honestly believe,’ I croaked, ‘in your heart of hearts, that everything is predetermined?’

‘Bhagavan said so. I wouldn’t presume to contradict him.’

‘The funny thing is,’ I turned to look at her, ‘I’m not sure it would help even if I did believe it. It would just make God a sadist.’

‘Who brought her to you in the first place?’

‘But what was the point, if…’ I could feel my fury building, and I forced myself to stop.

Barbara took both of my hands in hers. ‘The point,’ she said firmly, ‘was every moment you spent together, every smile you gave each other – and everything that you will do differently now because you met her. The point of everything is just…just itself. We go looking for meaning in things, a pattern, because that’s how our minds work. Listen; life has been compared to a dance. You don’t dance in order to reach a certain point on the floor – you dance for the sheer enjoyment of it. There’s no meaning there – there doesn’t need to be.’

‘So what about rules, laws, morality? If there’s no pattern, no meaning, can’t we just do as we like? What difference does it make if we kill or steal or…or rape?’ I threw the last word at her with deliberate force.

She didn’t hesitate. ‘Would you steal from yourself?’

‘What..? How could I?’

‘Precisely. There are rules for those who need them, for all the fools like you and me who can’t see that everything is the same, that everything is us and we are everything. A realised man has no need of morality because he’s incapable of harming that which he knows to be himself. Yes, you can do what you like, even according to a great Christian – "love, and do what thou wilt". But you must get that first part right. You must love, and love perfectly.’

‘So…Realisation, this perfect state, is…is love?’

‘In a way.’ Her eyes closed, and she tightened her grip on my hands. ‘Oh lord, Conrad, how many times can I say this? – they’re only words. If there was a way to show you I would. I wish there was a way to show myself.’

Even in my bruised condition I could sense her distress, so I said: ‘I think you did show Robert Blackman – maybe without meaning to.’

This seemed to calm her a little. ‘If I did,’ she said, ‘it was nothing to do with me. I hardly knew what I was saying. I think it was Caro’s presence, there in front of him, that really made the difference. He saw what his death really meant to her , what the consequences would have been. If I had any effect at all, perhaps having been at the point of death made him more receptive; the shock might have loosened the hold of his mind, or—’

She broke off as I pulled my hands free of her grip and delved inside my jacket. ‘Can’t believe I almost forgot this…’ I took out the envelope Blackman had given me.

‘What is it?’

I opened the flap and took out the single folded sheet of paper without replying. I could feel Barbara watching me as I unfolded the document.

There was no heading, no name or date attached. Just a block of prose:

The young girl was brought in unconscious; she had suffered serious injuries to most of her body, though her face and head were unmarked. She was taken immediately to the operating theatre, but before any work could be commenced she became conscious. It was strange; she seemed to feel no pain from the horrific injuries she had sustained, and her eyes were completely calm. She said nothing, but she looked directly at me. I then did something for which I have no explanation. I felt, very strongly, that she was asking me what was happening to her. And at the same time I felt she already knew. I cannot say why I feel this. But the feeling was so overpowering that I ignored all etiquette and common sense and simply told her ‘It seems you are going to die’. At this she smiled. A few moments later her eyes closed and she was dead before the operation could commence.

The paper blurred in my sight as I finished reading it. I screwed up my eyes and blinked away the tears, but they kept coming. It was like seeing her one last time, when I had thought she was gone forever. I was helpless. I bowed my head, let the paper fall, and surrendered to the grief once more.

After a few minutes Barbara spoke softly.

‘I know how this will sound…but you could choose to look at this as Caro’s – or God’s – way of letting you know that everything is really all right. She knew, at the end, that there was nothing to fear. D-do…do you see that?’

I couldn’t speak. I looked at her, and felt a vast gulf between us; the gap between what she believed and what I knew must be the truth. ‘She didn’t know anything,’ I almost snarled. ‘She was in shock – who knows if she even heard what the nurse said?’

‘Why are you hiding from this, Conrad? Don’t you want to be comforted?’

I bent my head. ‘I don’t want anything. Not a fucking thing. I don’t want to live. Either everyone else is right and this is a fucking awful universe, or you’re right and nothing matters anyway because it’s not real.’

‘Is that what you think?’ She took hold of my head, quite firmly, and pulled my face around. ‘What rubbish I must have been talking, these last few weeks. Conrad…everything is real. It’s all part of you, and you’re not going to doubt your own existence. Everything matters. It just doesn’t last. Use it, enjoy while it’s there, then let it go. Everything is what it is – that’s all you have to remember. Try to stop making it something else. Caro lived and she died – and that was wonderful. Not because she died, but because she lived. Would you rather she hadn’t? Can you really say you wish you’d never met her?’

I looked into her eyes. I took hold of her wrists and she allowed me to pull her hands away from my face. I held her hands a little way apart. Then I shook my head. ‘No. No, I could never say that.’

‘And is a universe in which she existed, however briefly, really that awful?’

‘She was taken away…’

‘But she was here. And you don’t regret that – you’ve just said so. You don’t regret meeting her. And if you hadn’t met her, Conrad, you’d be feeling no pain now. But you don’t regret it. Think about that. To me, that says you accept the world as it is. Deep down, you do – or you’re starting to. She loved you. That hasn’t changed, even though she’s not here to say it. You have to be worthy of that love. You have to let her be what she is – gone. Gone from this world, but not gone from your heart. And that’s what’s real. That’s where she lives. That’s where everyone you care about really lives, whether or not they’re still present in this world. And in your heart, you can’t hurt them or disappoint them or fight them – you can only love them. Caro is closer to you now than she ever was. All you have to do, for the rest of your life, is love her.’

Her arms were around me, her face was next to mine. ‘Love her,’ she repeated, ‘and move on to what you have to do next.’