“Outside. In the rain.” Susan pressed her fingers so hard into her scalp as she lathered up that it felt as if she were cleaning her brain.

“Yes but why?”

Susan twisted the hot tap up another notch, wondering whether she would ever feel warm again. “I’ve been feeding my CAS patient’s neighbor’s cat.”

“What’s a gas patient?”

“CAS—Community Attachment Scheme. Me and this single-purpose tool called Milo have been assigned to an outpatient called Mrs. Doherty. She’s pregnant. We have to interview her to find out what it’s like being a patient, rather than just reading about it in a book.”

“Sounds like your version of hell.”

It was. “Yeah, well, patients are kind of a thing if you want to learn how to treat them.”

“So why are you feeding her cat?”

“The cat next door—cat feces are bad for Mrs. Doherty’s unborn child.” It was an unorthodox arrangement.

“Aw, Susan, you’re so community-minded.”

Feeling had returned with a vengeance to her toes, and Susan was ready to get out. Turning the tap off, she held an arm out beyond the curtain. “Towel, please.” The one Esther handed over was thick and warm and smelled of expensive fabric softener. Not one of Susan’s, which were all ratty and thin and never quite dry.

“Actually I’m getting paid twenty-five pounds a day.” Susan ruffled her hair and thought about apportioning some of the profit to purchasing a set of new towels.

“And just like that it became seedy.”

“What? I’m feeding an overly affectionate cat called Tibbles for three days. I’ve stooped lower.” Susan cocooned herself in the towel. “Besides, seventy-five pounds is exactly the right amount for a new winter coat.”

Almost the second she said it, Susan shut her eyes in regret. There was the squeal of the shower curtain being flung aside, and when she opened her eyes, there stood Esther, starry-eyed and breathless with euphoria.

“SHOPPING TRIP!”

There was a missed call from Esther on Daisy’s phone. At the time it came in, she’d been sprinting as fast as she could through the Botanical Gardens, away from a shattered pane of the Glass Pavilion, and answering her phone hadn’t been a priority.

Anarchic Croquet was a much more extreme sport than she’d been expecting.

Regrouping at the rendezvous point, shoulders bristling with an assortment of “mallets” (baseball bats, hammers, a golfing umbrella, and a plastic flamingo), Daisy wondered about asking what would happen if they’d been caught on security camera, but someone bellowed out “Nachoooos!” and the group moved off toward a nearby pub.