‘How’s it feeling today, Sook?’

‘Much better. Getting there. I was this close to not calling Ben. Sticking to over-the-counter, but I think I’ll need the special medicaments for another month.’ She winced as she turned in her chair.

Three months ago – blame her new metal-flanged biker boots – Suki had slipped down the stairs in the shop and popped a disc and nicked a vertebra. It could have been a lot worse, she might have been paralysed, but still she’d been in serious pain since. The way her family had handled it was infuriating. Taking complete charge of the private medical bills, yes, but also treating Suki like a child. Petra wouldn’t understand the full dynamics of the Barlow family, but she could recognise the mean mix of punitive control they applied to her. They clearly didn’t like that she’d opted out of her family’s questionable activities, but instead of disowning her or simply letting her go her own way, it seemed to Petra that they used every opportunity to keep her under their thumb, reliant and compliant. She didn’t know why Suki just went along with it, asking cap-in-hand for her medicine every month. She would never understand: here in the old world, old money and old malice was rooted far deeper than she could ever fathom in her colonial naivety.

‘Don’t look at me that way. These are special medicaments, Pet. They’re not easily available on the high street.’ She shrugged. ‘You’re probably right I should try for my own supply, but they’re expensive and it’s not easy to get a prescription. And if I did, I couldn’t afford them.’

Suki’s money was all tied up in the family. She received an allowance on a handful of debit cards, and simply directed all her bills to the family accountants. It never really seemed to bother her that she had no savings of her own. A few years after Petra had come to study in the then United Kingdom, just after Helena had come to join her, the newly independent England had privatised the National Health Service, so now it operated on two tiers. A creaking, delay-ridden basic service, and everything else covered to various extents by expensive private health insurance.

‘Jeez. Tell me about it,’ Petra said.

‘Speaking of which, how’s your mum?’ Suki said as she pushed up and slinked her black-clad frame towards the shop floor; the stiffness of her movements somehow adding to the elegant effect. Petra followed her, regarding the perfect purple-tinted black dye job and the impeccably shaped and knife-keen fall of her hair down her back: the well-bred kid could try to escape her family but somehow she would always remember her breeding. It was as if she’d gone to walking school, for God’s sake.

Petra hesitated. ‘I didn’t actually get to her.’

Suki turned and smiled quizzically. ‘You didn’t go and see your mum, then?’

‘Well, it was a very minor thing and I doubt she even wanted me there. Anyhow, I’m going to pick her up later, so…’ Her guilty prattling ran out of steam.