‘As long as you want,’ repeats Graeme.

Caz looks to Rose. Her face is thin, serious. Capable.

‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ says Caz. She can feel the strange sadness of these moments, for all the hope they represent. It’s a victory in a fight that didn’t need to have been fought.

One day Rose returns from London, Aaron doesn’t go off wandering, and Caz stays round. No one planned it, but they’re all there. Graeme orders pizza, and they have it out of the box, sat around the table.

Caz finds herself watching Aaron and Rose eat. She remembers how they were when they first showed up, seven years ago.

For Rose, back then, it was less about consumption than saving up the food. Hoarding. She’d take tiny pieces, stretching the meal out. For every piece that went in her mouth, two or three would go in a pocket, or a cuff, or on her chair to be picked up later. After the first six months, she’d learned. She stopped hoarding things that wouldn’t last. No more mouldy corners of bread, or damp chips, or small rancid cubes of chicken. But if she got her hands on chocolate, a bar might last her two weeks, with tiny nibbles taken every night under her bedclothes.

But Aaron eating still holds the faintest shadow of something truly sickening. It’s a scar, damage made visible. He eats quickly, not beyond the bounds of what’s acceptable, but he does it with every fibre of his soul focused on the plate.

Caz’s own food seems less and less appetising.

‘Knock knock,’ says Graeme.

Rose smiles. ‘Who’s there?’ she says. She has a smear of red on her cheek. Her hair is loose and slightly greasy. She wears her baggy hoody, and in the thick folds of it her frame now seems as childlike as it ever was.

‘Europe.’

Aaron belts out a sharp laugh. ‘Europe who!’ he shouts, his mouth full of pizza.

Graeme frowns theatrically. ‘How dare you call me a poo!’

The sudden warmth is palpable. Caz looks at Graeme’s stubbled face. His eyes meet hers and he smiles, and she smiles back, a fragile happiness growing inside her.

The studio lights give off a dull heat. Rose stands on a bright white sheet of paper, hanging down from a stand. She feels the heat on her thighs, on her neck. She lets her head droop like she’s been told.

‘Now up,’ says Archie.

She looks up. Her eyes are wide, painted in thick lines. Her lips are red, her cheeks are white. The red is a dark red, the cheeks shadowed underneath, touched with bright sheen along the bone. When they make her face up, she holds absolutely still. They told her to. Even when they speak to her, she doesn’t smile, in case the face cracks and falls off.