‘I know,’ Titch says, eventually. She looks back at Aaron, and opens her mouth to say something. Instead she looks again at Rose. ‘How did you get in?’

‘We drove,’ says Rose.

The three of them stand, watching each other. The sun is bright through the skylight of the extension. It falls in a fierce white block across the table. The room is big, Rose thinks. Titch seems far away from her, like they’re outside, or in the foyer of her office. She turns to look behind her, scanning the room, her long coat swaying above her trim ankles.

Rose knows she has to say this right. ‘We thought we could stay.’

Titch turns back. She looks at Rose intently, with a slight frown. ‘Yes, but how did you get in?’

Rose hesitates. She is blind, tapping her way through. There is a route, she knows, she just has to stay calm and take it slowly.

‘You said you never get out here,’ she says.

Titch says, ‘I asked you a question.’

Her voice is hard. The room chills.

Rose feels her pulse begin to race. She cannot take it slowly now. She has to say it. She tries to think of the thing to say. She feels the words tripping away from her. In her head it is clear. There has to be a way of saying it – that she needed to come here. She needed it. More than she needed a dress, or a lipstick, or to suck Archie’s cock in the toilets of a posh restaurant.

‘I took the key,’ she says.

Titch’s face is impassive.

This feels like falling. It always feels like falling. She knows she is falling. But there is magic here, surely. There is magic that will catch her, and lift her up, her and Aaron, and set them safe.

The white light burns across the smooth table. Titch’s heel clicks sharp as she shifts her foot back, shifts her weight on her hips.

Rose moves too, enough for the sun to flare on the clear glass.

We will never be safe, she thinks.

‘Where from?’ asks Titch.

Titch is still standing on the same spot, still half on the turn, weight on one hip. She is still holding her handbag.

‘Your flat,’ says Rose, quietly.

‘Get out.’

Aaron looks at Rose. His face is pale beneath the grime.

‘Get out!’

Rose looks back. At Aaron, at Titch. At the immaculate white sofa. She is still holding the blackberry jam in one hand, the spoon in the other.

The thing that grips her is tight beneath her jaw. It’s pissing in a bucket. Picking sandwiches from a bin. Men’s eyes, men’s fingers. It’s Aaron, and watching Aaron sink. It’s being invisible, and then being stared at. It’s voices, adult voices, picking her up and telling her things will be all right, and they never are.

Ever.