SHE HAS THE afternoon to herself, until she needs to be at Hannah’s at six, so she wanders down to the bookshop where she finds a picture book for Tom. The tables outside the deli are still full. Everyone sitting at them seems terribly young. As she queues inside for salad, she watches them, these young people in their summer clothes, the self-consciousness of the way they sit, as though ready to have their photos taken, with their lemon water and their flat whites, starring in the movie of their lives. The way you do, when you are twenty-four or twenty-five, and you only see yourself from the outside in. She buys her salad and takes it into the park, where she sits beneath the old tree at the back of the old house and eats it, and then lies in the dappled sun.

At quarter to six she takes the back route to Hannah’s flat. Hannah buzzes her in, and she climbs the three flights of metal stairs to where her friend is waiting at the top.

Hannah looks well—she is tanned, wearing a short-sleeved dress, her hair a little longer. Cate doesn’t know what she expected, some lingering sadness perhaps, but the flat feels lovely, homely, the way the light catches the flowers on the table. Hannah makes tea, which they take out onto the terrace and drink in the last of the evening sun.

“You look good,” says Cate. “How are you, really?”

“I’ve been swimming,” says Hannah. “Every morning. It helps. And you? How’re you and Sam?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I have no idea how we’ll be.”

There is a silence, then, “I heard from Hesther,” says Cate.

“Who?”

“Hesther. From Oxford. I wrote to her to ask for Lucy’s address. A while ago. In the winter. She wrote back. Sent me her contact.”

“Oh Jesus, Cate. Really?”

Cate looks out, at the sun, setting now in the trees. She thinks of the days after the email—the letters composed, scrapped, written again. And then waking one morning in early summer, dressing Tom, dropping him off at Alice’s, cycling through the morning to work, and knowing, or understanding what she had known, really, all along. There was nothing to be gained from writing. There was much to be lost.

“I didn’t get in touch,” she says lightly, “in the end.”

She hears Hannah exhale. “That’s good.”

She turns to Hannah. “I did see Lissa though.”

“Lissa?”

Cate sees the momentary shock on her friend’s face. “We met up this afternoon.”

“To talk about me?”

“Actually, no. Not really. Although she asked about you. She seemed different. Sad. We talked about Sarah.”

“Sarah. Why Sarah?”

“She’s dying. She has cancer. Lissa asked to see me, to ask me about it. About how it might be.”