15

‘There’s a lot more space in here now,’ said Fran idly, glancing around Spencer’s living room instead of bending to the task for which she had set aside Wednesday evening.

‘What, now I’ve killed half the occupants, you mean?’ Spencer was lying on the sofa with the tortoise on his lap.

‘Bit more than half I’d say.’ She did a quick mental calculation. ‘More like ninety-eight per cent.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s a tremendous comfort.’ He tipped a little Extra Virgin olive oil into the palm of one hand and started applying it to Bill’s shell. He was looking after his remaining charges with renewed care, and had found this particular tip in the ‘Pet of the Week’ column of Reptile Monthly. There had, as usual, been no mention of paper eating.

‘It was good that you killed the snails,’ said Fran. ‘It was the only correct way to deal with them. You know they’ve just found a huge colony of them at Hornsey dump – and that’s because some stupid person must have decided to cull their collection by putting them out with the rubbish. Can you believe that? They’ve had to mount a special extermination programme just to get rid of them.’

‘Oh,’ said Spencer, and then tutted disapprovingly a couple of times, not trusting his voice to say more. He turned Bill over and started on the underside.

‘You know, you look like a Roman emperor with his favourite plaything,’ said Fran. ‘You should have someone oiling you.’

‘My days of being oiled are over.’

‘Mine too. Of course, Duncan was such a cheapskate that he always used Mazola so I smelled like a vegeburger.’

‘What about Barry? I’m sure he’d fork out for some First Pressing if you gave him a bit of encouragement.’

‘He’s back with his girlfriend, didn’t I tell you? Given up on me, thank God.’ She twiddled the pencil between her fingers and looked at the blank page in front of her. After a moment’s thought she wrote the number 1 and then put the pencil down.

‘Do you want a beer?’ she asked, getting to her feet. ‘They should be cold by now.’

‘Go on then.’

‘I’ll just shield my eyes.’ She snapped on the kitchen light and blinked again at the extreme whiteness of the walls, the blinding sheet steel of the pristine work surfaces. Spencer had lashed out on a new kitchen and had chosen a style oddly reminiscent of an operating theatre.

‘I just wanted it clean,’ he’d said, a touch nettled, when she’d pointed that out. The only remaining homely touches were the photo of Mark in the park, now curling a little at the edges, and the two pages of the list. She found the bottle opener in the new lime-green revolving cutlery dispenser, and threw the tops into the chrome swingbin.

‘Spence, can I ask you something?’ she said, reseating herself.

He didn’t answer for a moment, but held Bill up with one hand and tilted him to catch the light. ‘Bit of a transformation,’ he said admiringly.

‘Are you going to paint his toenails now?’

‘Might do,’ said Spencer. ‘Self-image is very important. It’s a key element in eating disorders.’ He placed Bill carefully on the floor and they watched as he began the trek to the magazine rack, his lumbering progress now strangely at odds with his jewelled appearance. ‘Ask away then.’

‘I just wondered what had happened to the Hypothetical Blinking Man.’ She hadn’t asked him again after that day at Kew; she had managed to batten down her curiosity, but there had been a subtle change in him since the turn of the year, a lifting of mood so slight that it could only be spotted by an old friend, only measured in nanometres, but present none the less.

Spencer took a long swig of beer. ‘Nothing’s happened really. In fact, not even “really”. Just nothing. I haven’t contacted him.’

‘So you’ve got his number, then?’

‘No, but I know where he works.’

‘Which is…?’

‘The North Middlesex.’

‘A nurse?’ Spencer had always had a penchant for nurses.

‘Eye surgeon.’

‘What, he’s a surgeon and he’s got a twitch?’ said Fran horrified.

‘He doesn’t operate with his eyelids,’ said Spencer, rather severely.

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Anyway, a lot of tics disappear completely when the person’s concentrating.’

‘Right. It’s just that I remember you saying all surgeons are psychopathic bastards.’

He thought about this for a moment. ‘Maybe it’s only the straight ones.’

She couldn’t imagine Spencer with a psychopathic bastard. She had got to know a couple of his previous boyfriends and they’d both been rather quiet, self-effacing men, apparently content to sit in the corner at pubs and laugh at other people’s jokes. ‘Harpo’, Mark had nicknamed one of them. ‘Smiles but never speaks.’ Neither of them had stayed on the scene for very long – blown over the horizon, she always thought, by the hurricane of Mark’s personality.

‘He did say,’ said Spencer, as if struck by a new thought, ‘that if I ever went to the Changing of the Guard then I should ring him.’

‘You’ve already been, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but I couldn’t see anything, so maybe it doesn’t count.’

‘Give him a ring, then.’

He shrugged. ‘I only met him the once. He probably wouldn’t even remember me.’

‘Balls. I bet he’s saying exactly the same thing about you.’

Spencer lay back on the sofa and laced his fingers across his stomach. ‘Do you want to get started?’

‘Yeah all right,’ said Fran, reluctantly. She looked at the piece of paper again, and added a full stop to the number i; then, as an afterthought, she wrote ‘House Meeting’ at the top of the page and underlined it using a table mat as a ruler. ‘Did I tell you,’ she said, putting the pencil down again, ‘that Sylvie’s got a special saucepan for the cat?’

‘No.’

‘Tinned cat food makes it ill, apparently, so every morning she has to boil up tiny bits of chicken and fish in a pan that’s completely uncontaminated by wheat products and then shove them through a sieve. Except that the smell makes her feel ill so she gets Peter to do it while she sits in the bedroom and sprinkles ylang-ylang on an oil burner.’ It was hard to express the weirdness of the two-storey odour that ensued: upstairs smelling like the meditation tent at Glastonbury, and downstairs like a baby vomitorium.

‘Do you know,’ said Spencer, carefully, ‘that that’s the third Sylvie anecdote you’ve told me since you got here.’

‘Is it?’

‘Not that I don’t enjoy them, but I wonder if you might be getting… a bit obsessed? After all, how much do you actually see of her? You’re at work all day, you’re out a lot in the evenings, and she sticks to her room most of the time, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes but –’ Fran tipped her chair back on two legs and searched for a description that would convey the pervasive presence of Sylvie. ‘What was the name of that woman poet who was ill all the time? There’s a film of it. She lies on the sofa and marries some other poet. Elopes.’

‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning?’

‘Yup. That’s the one. That’s Sylvie. Honestly, Spence, you needn’t laugh. In the film she sits around with the curtains closed and you’re meant to feel sorry for her and think how incredibly sensitive and poetic she is, but you never see the effect on the rest of the household. You never see them being told not to flush the loo after midnight because she’s a light sleeper, or having to listen to her going on about the happy place she’s just this minute discovered in the corner of the living room and wants to share with you, or always having to do the washing-up really quietly because she gets a headache if she hears two saucepans banging together, or hosing her cat’s crap off their winter greens every bloody day, or having to explain a joke three times because she’s got absolutely no sense of humour, or being told by her that they’re “wonderfully prosaic” as if they’re supposed to take that as some sort of compliment.’ She paused for breath.

‘Is that what she said to you?’

‘Yes,’ said Fran resentfully.

‘What was the context?’

‘She was talking about reincarnation. Again.’

‘And…’

‘I said I saw the world as a sort of giant compost heap… no, listen Spence, I thought it was a really good analogy. Stop laughing.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Spencer, composing himself, ‘but Sylvie’s right, that is wonderfully prosaic. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was a kind of giant compost heap.” ’

‘Yes, all right.’ She found herself grinning reluctantly. ‘But at least you don’t use the phrase as if you’re speaking to a peasant. And you don’t have – who was the bloke in the film? –’

‘Robert Browning.’

‘– Robert Browning agreeing with every word you say. They give me this look and I can feel my knuckles starting to scrape the ground – give me a couple of months and I’ll have forgotten how to use tools. My opposing thumbs will wither away.’

‘She’s really got under your skin, hasn’t she?’ said Spencer, bemused.

‘Yes, she has, and I don’t know how to cope with her, I don’t have a strategy. If I say anything even vaguely defensive she folds up like a deckchair and Peter gets all hurt and disappointed. You know they write in novels “she nestles in his arms”? I swear, that is literally what she does. He probably feeds her undigested food when I’m not looking.’ She took a long, soothing drink of beer. ‘And the thing is,’ she said, more meditatively, ‘when she gets upset I never know whether it’s my fault or not.’

If Spencer had been standing, he would have had to sit down.

‘What?’ she asked, noticing his expression.

He hesitated for a moment and then checked his watch.

‘What?’ she asked again.

‘Just thought I’d better note the time for the records – nine fifteen, February the thirteenth, nineteen ninety-one, public expression of self-doubt from Fran Tomlinson.’

She looked at him uncomprehendingly.

‘It’s not something you normally do,’ he said gently.

‘Really? Don’t I?’

‘No.’ He tried to swallow his laughter at her amazement. ‘Sylvie’s clearly having a terrible effect on you.’

‘I’m sure I have private self-doubt,’ she said, a touch uncertainly.

‘Well maybe you just hide it better than the rest of us.’ Though he hoped that wasn’t true; he really hoped that Fran’s psyche wasn’t a vicious maelstrom of self-destructive angst and internal conflict, kept in check only by a meniscus of iron will. It seemed unlikely.

‘Anyway, what I meant,’ said Fran briskly, moment of introspection apparently over, ‘is that it’s impossible to know in advance what’s going to upset her. Her whole life is a minefield. You mention the word “uncle” – you find her uncle’s just died. You happen to say that you think tortoiseshell cats are hideous, you find out that her first ever cat was a tortoiseshell and someone reversed over it.’

‘Her uncle?’ suggested Spencer.

‘Exactly. You mention in passing that music therapy’s a complete waste of time –’

His jaw dropped.

‘Just kidding, Spence. But it’s a kind of power she has. Sometimes it feels deliberate – she wrong-foots me every time. Nothing’s straightforward any more.’ She finished her beer and plonked it onto the table. ‘I’ve had enough of it.’

‘I’m sure you all have,’ he said, with feeling. He wondered how poor old Peter was coping with this running battle between Morgan le Fay and Jet from Gladiators.

‘Well, yes. Hence the meeting tomorrow evening.’ She picked up the pencil again. ‘And it’s nearly two years since we bought the bloody thing so I suppose it’s time we talked through the options. What there are of them.’

‘OK.’ Spencer hauled himself upright and tried to look alert. ‘How do you want to do this?’

‘Well, you know Peter – he’ll want a thorough discussion of every single permutation, even the ridiculous ones, so I want to be prepared. I want my arguments marshalled.’ She thought for a moment, beating a little tattoo with her pencil on the table top. ‘What about if you do the pros and I do the cons? It’ll be mainly cons.’

‘Fine.’ He stifled a yawn. The crickets that had escaped from the lizard tank had set up a breeding colony in his room, and he was finding it difficult to sleep. The noise that he had once found soporific was horribly disturbing when it came from just behind the bedside table, accompanied by unpleasant rustlings.

‘OK,’ said Fran, starting to write. ‘Number one – sell the house. Pros?’

‘Ideal solution.’

‘Cons. Completely fucking impossible.’ She marked a brisk little cross by the option and then suddenly looked up. ‘Did I tell you the house opposite’s been on the market so long that a bat hibernated in the little gap between the two halves of the sign? A pipistrelle. First sighting in Dalston, apparently.’ Her face, alight with momentary enthusiasm, resumed its expression of serious intent. ‘Right, number two. Everybody moves out and we put the house up for rent. Pros? Actually, Spence, it’s not even worth you saying anything, because the man in the letting agency said they had more stuff on their books than they knew what to do with and that it would have to be something “really special” to shift. When I said it was in Stapleton Road he laughed. Bastard.’ She put another cross on the paper.

‘I’m finding this quite easy,’ said Spencer.

‘Number three,’ she continued, ignoring him. ‘This is a good one. The good one. I move out, rent somewhere else and Sylvie and Peter get in a lodger to cover the mortgage.’

‘They’d need to do that, would they?’

‘The payment’s gone up three times in three months. It’s ironic, isn’t it – Sylvie’s actually an essential member of the household, financially speaking. Pros?’

He thought for a moment. ‘You and Sylvie would be living in different places.’

‘Yup, that has to be the top one. Any others?’

‘You could move out of Dalston.’

‘God, yes, to somewhere on the tube. That would be nice.’ She noted it down.

‘And cons?’ asked Spencer. ‘Are there any?’

Fran paused, and considered. ‘I’d miss Iris,’ she said. ‘And I’d really miss the garden.’

‘… so nearer the spring I could come over once a week for an hour or two and work on it. You’d just need to do some basic maintenance the rest of the time – you know, pull up any couch grass, pick off caterpillars, nothing very demanding – and we could share the veg. Of course, if you wanted to do more than that, it’d be great.’ Feeling generous and slightly noble, Fran put down her list and glanced across the table. Peter was looking inscrutable, and Sylvie sat with her eyes downcast, hands knotted under the long sleeves of Peter’s favourite pullover. The silence lengthened. The meeting so far had been oddly quiet – no disagreements, no provocative statements – instead Fran had the feeling that all parties were biding their time, manoeuvring quietly for position.

‘So what do you think?’ she prompted.

Peter cleared his throat. ‘I think we should talk through all the possible options before we make a decision.’

‘All right,’ said Fran doubtfully. She glanced at her list again; after number four, the level of seriousness decreased rapidly, something she blamed on the combination of Spencer and alcohol. ‘Before we go on,’ she said, unwilling to relinquish her carefully thought-out plan, ‘is there anything about the idea of you two staying here and me moving out that’s specifically a problem?’

Peter looked at Sylvie, and her head drooped like a flower soused with paraquat. ‘Yes there is,’ he said. ‘Sylvie doesn’t like Dalston.’

‘I don’t think anyone likes Dalston,’ said Fran. ‘I don’t, for a start.’

‘No, I mean she wants to move away.’ Sylvie nodded behind the curtain of hair.

‘Oh. You mean –’ hope flooded through her ‘– on her own?’

‘No, with me. We want to move out of London.’ One of Sylvie’s hands emerged from a sleeve and sought one of Peter’s and he took it as if accepting a gift. ‘I’m applying for a job in Norwich.’

‘Norwich?’ said Fran, stupidly.

‘We want to live somewhere where people care about each other,’ said Sylvie.

‘So, hang on –’ said Fran, trying not to be distracted by this non-sequitur ‘– you want to move out, right out of London, and leave me here?’

‘Yes,’ said Peter.

Fran looked at her list. This was option four, and while the only ‘pro’ Spencer had come up with was physical separation from Sylvie, the number of ‘cons’ was almost into double figures, the handwriting becoming larger and more frantic as each contraindication had occurred to her.

‘But that means I’d have to get two lodgers to cover the mortgage.’

Peter nodded sombrely.

‘But that would be awful, it would be like running a boarding house – one of me and two of them. And you wouldn’t even be near enough to help with any problems. What about the next time a bit of the house falls off? This place takes two of us to maintain.’ The previous weekend she and Peter had spent a whole afternoon taking turns at the top of a wavering ladder, clearing bucketfuls of putrid black gunk from the guttering.

‘I’d be general handyman and landlady. I’d have to do everything.’ The future scrolled away from her – a constant round of interviewing prospective tenants, of reminding them about rent and bills and double-locking the front door, of dull discussions about who pays for bog roll and washing-up liquid (‘but I only eat takeaways’), of clipped conversations about phone and bathroom usage and the idiosyncrasies of the pre-Cambrian thermostat, of justified complaints about lukewarm radiators and disintegrating floorboards and cupboard doors that came away in the hand. ‘Oh God, Peter,’ she said, with desperation, ‘you can’t mean it. There must be another option.’

‘Well, what else do you have on your list?’

Fran hesitated; a truthful reply was impossible. It read:

5. Nobody move out, instead learn to live together in an atmosphere of love and mutual understanding.

6. Hire an arsonist and collect on the insurance.

7. Buy a fake hand and leave it on the hall floor for Sylvie to discover.

8. Smuggle Mr Tibbs to a cattery and start sending ransom notes. (‘If she really loves him then thirty-five grand’s nothing’ – Spencer)

9. Lease the house to a film company specializing in suburban porn.

The last suggestion had been so appealing that they had wasted nearly half an hour thinking up titles (‘Sadie Does it Herself in Six Weekly Parts’, ‘Those Big Boys Next Door’, ‘How Firm Your Courgette’ (subtitled)) before Spencer had fallen asleep between adjacent sentences, and she had tiptoed away.

Peter was waiting for her answer. ‘None of them is very practical,’ she muttered, slightly ashamed, crumpling the piece of paper so that it would be unreadable from the other side of the table.

‘So where does that leave us?’

‘I don’t know. With you applying for a job in the sticks, I suppose.’

‘I’ve only just seen it advertised,’ said Peter. ‘Nothing’s definite yet.’

But looking at his hand grasping Sylvie’s, at the welded unit they formed together, Fran saw that the discussion was over and that all roads would henceforth lead either to Norwich or to some other provincial Utopia. Peter looked as implacable as when he’d forbidden her to borrow, or even touch, his new cassette player fourteen years ago and now, as then, her sole remaining option was to rage impotently.

‘Of course it’s definite,’ she said. ‘You’ve made up your mind, I can see you have. You decided this ages ago and didn’t tell me. What was the point of even having this talk? You might as well have left me a note on the table and buggered off. “Dear Fran, please look after the white elephant, all it needs is twenty-four-hour care and a constant supply of money.” ’

‘Sylvie and I have been discussing it for a while,’ said Peter, calmly, ‘but we had other decisions to make first.’

‘Oh yeah, like what?’ She felt poised for the next rally, tongue at the ready.

‘Well…’ He drew Sylvie’s hand closer to his chest. ‘Do you want me to say, Sylvie?’ She raised her head and smiled at him shyly.

‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

‘Or would you rather wait?’

‘No, perhaps we should say.’

‘All right then. If you don’t mind.’

‘No, I don’t mind.’

What?’ asked Fran, hoarse with frustration.

‘Well…’ They exchanged complicit looks. ‘Sylvie – Sylvie and I – are going to have a baby.’

Fran blinked at them.

‘We thought you might have guessed,’ said Peter. ‘Sylvie’s been getting terrible morning sickness.’

‘And migraines,’ said Sylvie, smiling wanly. Peter lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles.

‘But I thought –’ began Fran, and then stopped. They looked at her, Sylvie a little anxious, Peter shiny with bliss. ‘Congratulations,’ she said, almost too late.

‘Are you pleased?’ asked Sylvie.

‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’

‘It means you’ll be an auntie.’

‘Yes, I suppose I will.’ She couldn’t believe her own obtuseness. How many more signs would Sylvie have needed to display? A half-knitted matinee jacket? A foetal scan sellotaped to her forehead?

‘We didn’t want to say anything until Sylvie was at least twelve weeks pregnant.’

‘It was a surprise to us, too,’ said Sylvie, eyes modestly lowered.

‘You’re the first person we’ve told.’

‘Oh. Well, thanks. That’s brilliant. Fantastic news.’ Her mouth seemed to be doing the right thing while her brain was still lying on the canvas, being fanned by the seconds.

‘When’s it due?’

‘August,’ said Peter.

‘Our little Leo,’ said Sylvie.

‘What, you’ve already picked a name?’

‘No, I meant the birth sign.’

Fran realized with a jolt that there would be no getting rid of Sylvie now – she might be leaving the house, but she was entering the family, and every Christmas, every wedding, every funeral would be studded with exchanges exactly like the last. She felt worn down by the burden of future feyness.

‘Or it might just be over the cusp into Virgo,’ added Sylvie.

‘Even better,’ said Fran. As discreetly as she could, she eased the shameful list from the table and shoved it into her pocket. The house discussion was now clearly moribund; two against one had suddenly turned into three against one with the baby hitting well above its weight.

‘We should crack open a bottle,’ she said, heavily, getting to her feet. ‘I think there’s some white in the fridge.’

‘What about the meeting?’ asked Peter, dragging his eyes from Sylvie. ‘We ought to carry on with the meeting.’

‘Why? What’s the point?’ The words came out more sharply than she intended, and the happy look faded from Peter’s face. She struggled to make amends. ‘I mean, let’s just leave it for today. Let’s pick it up another time.’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘Yeah I’m sure.’ She managed a glum smile. ‘Let’s celebrate.’

‘Ace in the hole,’ said Spencer, when she phoned him later that evening. ‘They were playing with a concealed card. Totally unfair.’

‘Yeah, the bastards.’ Out of a sense of mild melancholy, she was sitting in the dark, watching the rain slant across the lit square of Iris’s kitchen window. On the table in front of her sat Mr Tibbs, his eyes disconcertingly fixed on hers, the pupils huge and depthless.

‘And are they happy about it?’

‘Very.’

‘And are you?’

‘Give me a while. For me it’s not a baby, it’s a lifetime in Dalston.’ Mr Tibbs seemed to be leaning towards her and she shifted the chair so that she was turned away from him.

‘So when are they off?’

‘It depends whether he gets the Norwich job. But they’re going on holiday next month, so at least I’ll get the house to myself for a couple of weeks. I bloody can’t wait, honestly Spence, I’m going to run up and downstairs in the nude, and flush the toilet every –’ A sudden wet roughness enclosed her ear and she jerked her head away. ‘Get off.’

‘What?’ asked Spencer.

‘It’s the cat, he was trying to – stop it.’

‘What’s it doing?’

‘Trying to lick my earlobe – he’s got a thing about earlobes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I smear Whiskas on them.’

What?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Maybe he finds them attractive. Duncan always did.’ Mr Tibbs was moving towards her again, neck outstretched and a vaguely lustful look on his face, the tip of his tongue just visible. Repulsed, she gave him a light shove and his back legs slid off the edge of the table, rapidly followed by the rest of him. He hit the floor with a thud and the light snapped on to reveal Sylvie standing in the doorway, hot-water bottle in hand.

‘Tibbsy,’ she said piteously.

‘He’s OK,’ said Fran. ‘He just fell off the table.’

‘You pushed him. I saw you.’ She knelt and the cat crept towards her with a death-rattle mew.

‘You’d better apologize,’ said Spencer, in Fran’s ear.

‘He was sucking my earlobe,’ said Fran.

‘He can’t help it. The vet thinks he was weaned too early.’

‘So he thinks my ear’s a nipple?’

‘Apologize,’ said Spencer.

‘He’s only a little cat and you hurt him.’

‘I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry.’

‘Well done,’ said Spencer. ‘Phone me back.’ She had hung up the receiver before she realized that Sylvie was crying, blotting her tears into Mr Tibbs’s orange fur.

‘I’m sorry, Sylvie,’ she said again. ‘But he is a cat and they land on their feet. It’s not like shoving a baby off a table.’ It wasn’t, she realized immediately, a happy analogy. ‘Not that I meant to shove him off,’ she added.

‘You said you’d look after him,’ said Sylvie in a small voice. She wiped her face with the back of one hand.

‘Did I? When did I?’

‘When we go on holiday.’

‘Oh then. Well of course I’ll look after him.’ She tried to hide her exasperation. ‘I’m not going to hurt him, Sylvie. I work with animals, I know about them, he’ll be fine. I’ll boil bits of chicken and everything.’

‘But looking after him doesn’t just mean feeding,’ said Sylvie, sententiously. She was stroking the cat with long, even gestures. ‘He needs to feel loved as well. Don’t you, Tibbsy? I couldn’t leave him if I thought he might be unhappy, I’d have to cancel the holiday.’ Tense with ecstasy, Tibbsy thrust out his hindquarters and waggled his rectum in Fran’s direction.

‘Honestly,’ said Fran, ‘I’ll be lovely to him.’

‘Really?’ Sylvie gazed up at her.

‘Really.’ And then, because she still looked doubtful, ‘I absolutely promise.’

Sylvie nodded slowly and then got to her feet, brushing a few stray hairs from her fingers. ‘I wish we got on better, Fran,’ she said. ‘I wish we could be friends, but I know you think I’m silly and oversensitive about things.’

Fran stood paralysed, nailed by the truth.

‘My granny always used to say that I had one skin too few so I feel everything more, and I know I can often sense things that other people can’t, and that makes me different.’ She smiled gently, her eyes still shining from the tears. ‘And I know it’s hard for some people to tolerate differences.’

‘Now hang on just a cotton-picking minute…’ Fran wanted to say, but managed – by dint of massive self-control – not to. Instead she nodded dumbly.

Sylvie started to unbutton the cover of her hot-water bottle. ‘Sometimes I even wish I could have that thick layer between me and the world that other people have. But then I feel I’d miss so much. It would be like watching a rainbow wearing dark glasses.’ She shook her head sadly and fiddled with the screw top of the bottle. ‘You couldn’t do this for me, could you Fran? It’s a little bit stiff.’

Fran unscrewed the plug and handed it back.

‘Thanks.’ She reached forward and took one of Fran’s hands. ‘I’d love to start again, you know, and try and really be friends. I’m sure we could. I do admire you, you know, Fran. You’re so…’

‘Practical,’ thought Fran.

‘Practical,’ said Sylvie.