‘Your cakes went down a storm tonight,’ Tor tells Claire. ‘Everyone loves them. Lotte will be gutted there aren’t any left.’

‘They went faster than ever. I’ll have to make more.’

‘They’re so good, you know,’ Maddy says. ‘You should run a café.’

‘A café? Me? Oh, no, my cakes aren’t that good.’

‘They are!’ Tor exclaims. ‘I’d pay good money for that coconut one any day.’

Claire grins. ‘Well, that’s lovely of you to say so.’

Tor sits in the back and watches as Claire flips down the visor in the passenger’s seat.

‘Oh good gracious. Look at the state of me,’ she says. ‘Why didn’t any of you tell me?’

Maddy laughs. ‘Stop being so self-critical.’

‘I’ve been trying to get an appointment at the hairdresser, but it’s impossible to get through.’

‘I can get Lotte to do your hair,’ Tor offers. ‘She used to work in a salon.’

‘Really?’

‘I can ask her,’ Tor says, taking out her phone and texting, as they drive into town back towards Tor’s house. Her phone pings back straight away.

‘She says to bring you round now.’

‘Now?’ Claire asks.

‘Well, it’s not that late. It’s only half eight.’

‘Well, if you’re sure?’

‘I can drop you off,’ Maddy says.

‘Oh no, come too,’ Tor says. She hasn’t invited people round for ages. ‘Stay and have a drink. We’ve rigged up lights in the garden and there’s wine in the fridge.’

As they walk through the front door, Tor can’t help seeing her house through her friends’ eyes. The messy chaos is something that she takes for granted, but now, as they squeeze awkwardly past the jumble of bikes in the corridor, the scuffed floorboards and the ancient threadbare carpet runner down the stairs, the pop art graffiti over the walls, she feels embarrassed. She’s fed up with this kind of communal living. She wants somewhere where she can relax when she comes home and not have to deal with other people.

‘I’m home,’ Tor calls.

‘In here,’ Lotte calls back and she beckons Maddy, Claire and Tor to the kitchen.

‘The kick-ass swimmers,’ Lotte says. ‘Heavenly. Come in, come in. And great timing. I’ve just finished,’ she adds. Declan, their housemate, is on the wooden kitchen chair and Tor’s Anglepoise lamp is trained on his upper arm, where Lotte has inked the last part of his elaborate lotus flower sleeve. She’s carefully sticking cling film over it.

Declan stands up and Tor sees Maddy clock his lanky thin limbs and crazy beard. He’s painfully shy and shuffles off.

The kitchen smells of boiled lentils and there are pots and pans piled up in the sink, but Maddy only smiles. ‘Look at those herbs and your lovely garden,’ she says. ‘It’s like being in the middle of the countryside.’

She’s being nice, Tor thinks. ‘Sorry about the mess.’

‘It’s not messy. I like it. It’s homely. These old Edwardian town houses have such amazing proportions and energy about them.’

Lotte grins, delightedly, the gap between her front teeth as endearing as ever. She’s wearing a diaphanous green dress with her twelve-hole DMs, her arms jangling with bangles. ‘Oh, you … you’re the one,’ Lotte says, hugging Claire effusively, ‘who makes the delicious cake, aren’t you? You smell like a delicious cake. And look at those curls.’ She fluffs out Claire’s hair. ‘Oh, my.’