‘Oh!’ Lizzie can’t hide her surprise, or delight, especially when Tess also appears in her nightcap and slippers.

They settle on blankets in the back garden, a frigid wind snatching the wisps of steam from their cups and dispersing them into the navy sky. Within minutes, Frankie starts grumbling about being cold and wasting her time. ‘The moon looks as boring as ever.’

‘Shush,’ Lenny whispers.

‘Why? It can’t hear me.’

‘Maybe it can. You don’t know.’

‘Maybe it’s made of cheese. This is a ridiculous waste of time and sleep. Come on, girls, let’s—’

The sky darkens then, as the moon starts disappearing, sliver by sliver.

‘Holy shit.’

‘Language, Frankie!’ Tess’s voice is shrill in the night air.

‘Don’t mind me. I hear worse at school,’ Lenny whispers cheerfully. The giggles die out as the moon becomes visible again, only this time as a glowing ruby ball.

‘Holy fucking shit.’

‘It’s amazing.’

‘Beautiful.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Lizzie says, looking across briefly to see them, the shelter women, with Tess on the end, lying with their heads tipped back, silent and symmetrical, like a row of swans looking upwards, lost in the supermoon. A group of women, and for once she is part of it.

Later, when Lizzie goes to make a cup of tea, she finds a mug by the kettle with a huge red circle painted on it. Underneath is written ‘Lizzie Supermoon’.

As she is making her way upstairs, she hears Frankie calling her. ‘Oi, Luna, you coming in or what?’

They were all in the living room, with plates of toast and crumpets on their knees. In the middle is a space, saved just for her. ‘Go on, then, put on your posh show,’ Frankie says, and passes Lizzie the remote control.

Dan

(What did you call me?)

DAN WAS WORRIED WHEN Atticus started volunteering in his local charity shop. Why did he want to waste his time there, when his phone beeped and trilled non-stop with work stuff? Dan was no Peeping Tom, but occasionally, as he was walking past, he peeped at Atticus’s messages. All of them seemed to be pleas for him to call people back about exciting projects, or from artists keen to meet him. Dan wondered why he was hiding among bric-a-brac and bunting when he could be drinking champagne among paintings and sculptures.

‘I like it there,’ Atticus told Dan simply, when he asked in his best not-counsellor voice. ‘It’s a nice break from the fakery of the art world.’

Dan, who didn’t know the art world, couldn’t argue with this. All he could do was remind himself not to tilt his head in the classic counsellor 101 move that Atticus knew all too well. They’d only been seeing each other for three weeks but already Atticus knew his moves.