If Kelly listened closely, Norma’s storytelling had what her teacher at the Workers’ Education Association would term a certain modernist mastery. She held six or seven different parenthetic asides in motion, ultimately tying off each loose end before returning to the main theme. But shit, she took so freaking long to get there. And unlike, say, James Joyce, her talent was wasted on her material. Kelly shook herself out of it. This wasn’t art; it was therapy. The talking filled a need for self-soothing. What hadn’t struck Kelly until recently was the depthlessness of that need.

‘… eczema, which began bleeding when she scratched it …’ Less hungover, Kelly might have fancied going down to the beach, which had fallen eerily quiet after yesterday’s drama, in her new bikini. She usually enjoyed flaunting herself to the clubbies, making up for lost time. She had been the property of men since she was fourteen. After becoming single, her character had not changed but its mode of expression had. The same fuck-you, but whereas before it had involved concealing her body, now it involved showing it off to the rollcall of boys and man-boys of Bluebird (actually seven, but it seemed a lot more) with whom she had had relations since splitting with Gordon. Was Gordon included in the seven? She had to work that out, do a recount. What was going on between them? What had she done? Why did she feel so helpless and weak this morning, like she was waiting for him to come home and dictate their new terms of engagement? Her fuck-you was all bluff, she now realised. She was as full of shit as any man.

Norma was talking about the general manager of Ron’s nursing home, ‘who has a doctorate but he’s not a real doctor, I think it’s in theology’. From there she progressed to an abscess she was developing on her thigh and her upcoming visit to the dermatologist, to which Kelly would of course drive her.

Lou was climbing up the steps from the beach. Pinning her phone between her ear and her shoulder, Kelly raced to her bedroom to replace her telltale caftan with bra, T-shirt and shorts. ‘I have to go.’

‘Well. You don’t have to be like that,’ Norma responded as if denied her right to free speech. ‘You’re always in such a hurry. Sometimes I think you’re only interested in what you can get.’

Every now and then, Norma came out and said what she thought. It took her so long to get there, it always felt like an ambush.

‘I’ll call you later, Norma.’

Inside, the front door closed behind the departing Cnut, and Lou was bearing down on the La Marzocco. ‘Coffee?’

‘I’ve already had two,’ Kelly said.

‘So that’s a no?’

‘What harm could another do?’

‘That’s the shot.’