She likes to watch, though. Sometimes, she’s allowed to slip into the background, and instead of being stared at, she can watch like she used to. Then she sees more. She sees Titch’s eyes flick towards her. Titch looks sad, sometimes, and sometimes there’s a little bitter fleck in her eye, a glance at Rose’s ankles, or her wrists.

She sees Archie, his face soft and eager. The way he waits, smiling, while people talk, already ready to reply before they finish speaking.

Titch calls Archie Prince Charming. He takes Rose out on dates. He wears clothes in ways she didn’t think men wore clothes. He kisses her, and sometimes, in the restaurant, he gets her to blow him in the toilets.

When she first kissed him, at the premiere, she touched his thigh in the bar. She reached out because she wanted to. She touches him still, but only when he asks. She doesn’t know the rules well enough yet to touch without him asking. The first night there were no rules, or only her rules, but now there are his. She doesn’t think he knows this, but it doesn’t make it less true.

He holds her hand sometimes, and takes her finger between his finger and thumb. He rolls the flesh, gently, over the bone, like he’s measuring something.

He is nice. He’s kind. Titch knows he is kind, and she tells Rose as much. He gets Rose clothes and shoes and perfume. When she puts the perfume on she has the feeling that someone else, someone richer and older, is standing behind her. He doesn’t ask for anything. He’s not like Jack, with wolf teeth and hard, angry eyes. Sometimes touching him is like touching dough. He doesn’t feel warm. In the restaurant toilet, she gets cramp.

Titch told him she was in care. His eyes lit up with sympathy. The two of them said she was so brave. Archie said he’d put it on the press release.

Rose asks things sometimes. She knows she gets it wrong, but sometimes she has to ask. One morning she asks Titch if her other house is spare.

‘Spare?’

‘Empty,’ says Rose.

Titch smiles. She smiles when she knows, and she smiles when she doesn’t know. ‘In a way,’ she says. ‘I don’t get out there as often as I might.’

Rose thinks that’s a yes. ‘Can I live there?’

Titch laughs. A deep, friendly chuckle. Titch doesn’t always laugh like this. She has another laugh for other kinds of conversations. Politer, softer.

Sometimes Rose feels older than them all. But then she reminds herself that she is new here, and she doesn’t know the rules yet.

Late at night, Oni calls Alisha. Each of them lies on their bed as they talk. They talk for a long time. Alisha feels Oni’s voice in her ear. She hears the softness of it.

‘I’m sorry I was so wasted,’ says Alisha. ‘I wanted to see you.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘You should come again.’