Al wasn’t the father of her child. She didn’t know the father’s name; he was just one of the men who’d paid her for sex in the bad days. Funny that the man would never know he had a child. A son. She didn’t know what she’d tell her boy about his father when the time came. Or about herself.

Cat felt Al’s fingers caressing the side of her breast, but that was as far as it went. He hadn’t pressured her for sex. Just kissing and petting. If he’d wanted sex, she would have said yes. Some boys got freaked out about being with pregnant girls, but Al said it wasn’t that. It was respect, he said. She’d told him that sex didn’t mean anything to her, not after years of doing it for money, so he said he wanted to wait until it did.

She wondered if that meant he was getting what he needed from someone else. She didn’t want to ask.

He sat up on the beach and helped her to do the same. Superior was loud. The cloudless sky shimmered with stars. She felt a strange rush of contentment, but it was shadowed by the guilt of hiding things about herself from Stride and Serena. And from Al, too. Keeping secrets was a hard habit to break. In the past, her secrets had kept her alive.

‘My buddy gave me a couple joints,’ he said. ‘You want a puff?’

‘No, thanks. I shouldn’t. But you go ahead.’

He lit one and held the smoke in his mouth. When he exhaled, sweetness surrounded her. He had a warm beer can in the sand, too, and she’d allowed herself a swallow, but nothing more.

‘Anna’s not speaking to me,’ Cat said.

Anna was the waitress at the Grizzly Bear Bar.

Al said nothing. The joint did its thing. He looked as if he were far away, on one of the stars, where all their little problems didn’t matter.

‘She’s not even reading my texts,’ Cat went on. ‘She’s pissed because I didn’t tell her I was living with two cops.’

Her boyfriend sighed as he returned to earth, as if this were a conversation he didn’t want to have. ‘Well, why didn’t you tell her?’

‘I didn’t want to scare her away.’ Cat scrunched up her pretty face in annoyance. ‘It’s not fair. Serena doesn’t want me hanging out with any of my old friends. She told Fred at the bar she’d have the place busted if he let me inside again.’

‘Sorry.’ Al added: ‘Do Stride and Serena know about me?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think they’d say you shouldn’t see me?’

‘I don’t know. Probably.’

‘Well, you’re not going to be able to hide it forever,’ he said.

‘Have you told your mother?’