‘That’s why we started talking to each other, wasn’t it?’ she says. ‘We were both grieving.’

‘What?’ I shake my head.

‘I didn’t need the details; I just got that vibe from you. Our sad bits attracted and joined up. You seemed so agitated. Like you were on high alert.’

All this time I suppose I felt superior somehow, when in fact she was the one who knew my true heart.

‘Really? You didn’t just think I was … fun? I was in a Garfield suit.’

‘You seemed to me like a person in a lot of pain. Did I not seem like that to you?’

‘No, you just seemed … wry.’

‘Oh. I thought that was how we bonded. Over our horribly unspoken heartbreak.’

I pause. Swallow.

‘And … what is your heartbreak, Nicolette?’

I am dreading the answer, and also I know that this layer has always existed between us: the vast salt flats of the post-corporeal mind. Grey, cold and dissolving in fine mizzle. Nicolette and I meet there nightly, and we dance a slow dance.

Nicolette hunches over. There is musty silence. She raises her eyes to meet mine, and then cringes like she is about to receive a blow. ‘My sister killed herself,’ she says. ‘Last January. She drank three bottles of wine and hanged herself. I can’t stop wondering whether it was the wine or whether she’d have done it anyway.’

‘Oh god, Nicolette.’

‘It’s okay. I don’t believe in closure so I’m just … assimilating. And I do believe she’s still out there in the universe somewhere, doing something. I do.’

She weeps, effortlessly. I put my hand on her hand and I squeeze. Her hand is warmer than mine, I can feel it. ‘I had no idea,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry, Nicolette.’

‘So funny, I thought you could see right through me. I thought I didn’t even have to say it, because you just always knew. It was implied in a thousand unspoken things, I was sure. I think maybe you did have an idea.’

My mother comes in with our gins. She doesn’t ask what has happened and I think she has probably listened or guessed or tuned in or who knows and who cares. For the next ten or twenty minutes, we are just three women sitting together, looking out from our faces, doing our best. Life goes on. That’s the great insult of it, I suppose.

When Nicolette has gone, my mother goes down to make dinner.