Back in the house they lay out the food on the table in the kitchen, make a strong pot of coffee, put on some music, and open the window out onto the park, where the grass is filling with small clusters of people. Every so often one of those people will look up towards the house. They know what the person is thinking—how do you get to live in a house like that? How do you get to live in a three-story Victorian townhouse on the edge of the best park in London? Luck is how. A friend of a friend of Lissa’s offered her a room, and then, during the same year, two more rooms came up, and now they live in it together—the three of them. In all but the deed, the house is theirs. There is an agent somewhere in the far reaches of Stamford Hill, but they have a strong suspicion he does not know what is happening to the area, as their rent has remained stable for the last two years. They have a pact not to ask for anything, not to complain about the peeling linoleum or the stained carpets. These things do not matter, not when a house is so loved.

Sometime around eleven Lissa wakes and wanders downstairs. She drinks a pint of water and holds her head, and then drinks some coffee and eats some of a croissant. She takes her coffee to the steps outside and rolls a cigarette and enjoys the morning sun, which is just starting to warm the lowest of the stone steps.

When coffee has been drunk and cigarettes smoked and morning has become afternoon, they take plates and food and blankets out into the park, where they lie in the dappled shade of their favorite tree. They eat their picnic slowly. Hannah and Cate take turns reading the paper. Lissa shades her eyes with the arts pages and groans. A little later on they open the wine and drink it, and it is easy to drink. The afternoon deepens. The light grows viscous. The chatter in the park increases.