Downstairs, she sits, alert like a meerkat, with the lemon biscuits she made earlier. Maud jumps onto her lap and Lizzie is grateful her hands have something to do as they stroke her. They are the only two in the room. Lizzie is about to give up and go back to Lenny when she hears hissing from the corridor. ‘Just for ten minutes, please, Frankie. No, she’s not, not when you get to know her.’

Lizzie hears Frankie groan loudly. Then she shuffles in, her motley crew behind her, and Lizzie moves to the far corner of the sofa to make room for them.

Moments later, Tess bustles in with a tray of tea, and a ‘There, isn’t this nice? All my girls together.’

Lizzie opens the beads she brought and the others watch as she sorts them into DNA strands of colour. Sarah cracks first and begins a bracelet, her fingers slim and nimble. There is a white scar on her knuckle that moves as she twists a bead onto the nylon.

‘The turquoise is good next to the white. You need light in order to see colours,’ Lizzie says, passing her a handful of beads.

Sarah smiles shyly, not showing any teeth, and, encouraged, Lizzie carries on. ‘Aristotle thought colours came from mixing black and white together. Then Isaac Newton did his prism experiment and the theory changed.’

Sarah says, ‘I didn’t know that,’ which is Lizzie’s favourite sentence. She beams, and Sarah, who knows nothing about Aristotle or colour spectrums, tells her she’s from Crawley and she misses her mum but is too scared to go back to visit, in case he finds her.

Lizzie misses her mother, too, but can’t admit that out loud. Instead, she digs in her supplies for the nicest beads to pass to Sarah. ‘Blue means protection, and in China red represents happiness. Maybe you can make your mother one too.’

Sarah smiles at her, as does Tess. Even Frankie has stopped glaring.

It’s hot and Lizzie is stuck in the corner of the sofa. Panic dances at the edge of her vision. She pinches her thigh hard and thinks of Lenny, her port in the storm, and her feet twitch with her need to flock to him. Maud’s wet nose is cold when it nudges her. The shock brings her back to the present. Lizzie moves her wrist away, but Maud finds it again and gives it a hard nudge, with the gentlest hint of teeth. Do it, Lizzie. Stop running away.

She takes a deep breath, and carefully rolls up her sleeves so the scars and burns emerge. The conversation withers, like the wrinkled patches on her skin. Lizzie says nothing, just carries on digging for beads, her fingers shaking, while Maud sighs on her lap in quiet approval.