She does not speak to Cate for weeks.

And Cate is queasy with guilt. She has done something, or not done something—she is not sure which. She should have done more.

But if Lissa had been meant to get the part, she would have gotten it, wouldn’t she? It was Lissa’s decision to go away to a place in the middle of nowhere. It was Lissa’s destiny, wasn’t it—to lose out?

Cate

DINNER. FRIENDS FOR DINNER. A DINNER PARTY. SUPPER. FRIENDS for supper. A gathering. However Cate frames it to herself, the thought is excruciating—she is no good at such things. But Sam seems happy about the arrangement. On Sunday, his day off, he brings out his knives and pans. He hands Tom a saucepan and a wooden spoon, and Tom sits on the floor, happily playing with them both as Sam flips through cookbooks.

“I want to do something Kentish,” he says. “You ever eaten whelks? I could do them with shallots and tomatoes and lime. And then something with dabs. I could get fish from that place on the coast. They supply the restaurant.”

Cate looks at him in the narrow kitchen, in the gray light of the winter afternoon, sleeves rolled up, and realizes she hasn’t seen him so happy for months.

The day of the dinner she spends the morning cleaning. She moves Tom with her from room to room, putting him on the floor with his toys while she scrubs toilets and sinks and vacuums floors. She has the radio on in the background.

Parliament has voted by a tiny majority to increase student fees to nine thousand pounds a year. Large protests in central London yesterday.

When the cleaning is done, she turns on the TV and watches footage of protestors on the roof of the Conservative Party Headquarters. Placards on fire. Charles and Camilla, their horrified faces as a window of their car is smashed. A close-up of one of the protestors, a young man with his mouth open wide. She knows the look. The war cry. Feels it land in her gut.

Sam is home after his afternoon shift, carrying a bulging bag of fish and vegetables, which he puts in the fridge, along with four bottles of wine. “I got a good Burgundy,” he says, “it was on sale in the supermarket.”

She can hear him singing as he takes a shower. He comes down in a T-shirt and jeans. “Come on, little guy.” Sam straps Tom in the high chair, gives him some carrot to play with, then ties on an apron, pulls out his knives, and sets to work on an onion. She lingers, watching him, his wide forearms, his skill with the blade, the flash of the knife. When the onion is chopped, he looks up. “What are you looking at?”

“Just—I remember the first time I saw you do that. The first night we met.”