She took her mug to the sink, running the water until it steamed and then scrubbing her hands before she started on the pots. The water left her fingers red and swollen, and it didn’t make her feel any cleaner.

Chapter Eighteen

“Whoa!” Janelle blew a pink bubble of admiration and popped it on her nose. “That’s proper manky.”

Sam poked a cautious finger at one of Rosie’s sutures. “Did a shark bite you?”

“No, love.” Rosie began to re-bandage her arm. “I cut it on a broken window.”

When he held out the Curly Wurly he’d promised as payment for a look at the wound, she snapped it into three and shared it between them. The beanbag crinkled as she inched lower, and she yawned, getting comfortable. She’d lost count of the recent nights of broken sleep, or no sleep, or sleep plagued by nightmares.

“Rosie was in a fire, you twerp,” Janelle said around a mouthful of caramel and melting chocolate. “Mam’s kept all the cuttings from the papers.”

Sam sniffed and then wiped his nose on his school shirt, already distracted by something on his tablet. “I wish it’d been a shark.”

Janelle bum-shuffled across the carpet until she was sitting between Rosie’s legs. Resting her head on Rosie’s chest, she patted Rosie’s bad hand.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

Rosie kissed her dark curls. “No, not really.”

“Only, you look dead sad.”

“I do?” Rosie had called at her mam’s for breakfast before her shift, unsure whether she wanted company but resolved to get on with things. Her determined bonhomie had fooled her mam, but Janelle had always been the one to see through Rosie’s bullshit. As a child, she’d spotted medicine concealed in yoghurt, refused to believe that the tune on the ice cream van meant it had run out of ice cream, and lain in wait for “Father Christmas” with a torch and an ancient Instamatic. The photo of Rosie drunkenly sorting presents into stockings was still pinned above Janelle’s bed.

“Yeah, your eyes aren’t smiling,” Janelle said. “And you didn’t eat your sausages, so I know something’s up.”

“Nothing gets past you, Sherlock, does it?” Rosie sighed. “Okay, okay. You know Jem, the paramedic who was in the fire with me?”

“Yup. Mam said you stayed with her in the hospital.”

“I did.” Rosie hesitated, unsure how to phrase this. “Well, we were getting to be really good friends, but then she decided she didn’t want to be friends any more.”

Janelle turned onto her front, propping her chin on both hands and studying Rosie with a mildly unnerving intensity. “When you say ‘good friends,’ do you mean girlfriends?” she asked.

Rosie nodded, refusing to look away. “Yes, I mean girlfriends.”

“Ooh, have you got a girlfriend, Rosie?” Sam yelled from across the room.

“Oi! Shut it!” Janelle yelled back. “We’re having an intervention.”