‘I had a meeting yesterday with my boss.’

‘Oh?’

‘They want me to consider early retirement.’

‘I hope you bit their hand off.’

Dominica glances across at her with a frown. She’s been feeling churned up about it, so Helga’s no-nonsense reaction is a surprise. Although, knowing Helga, it shouldn’t be. ‘I don’t know. Retirement makes me feel old. The word … I can’t believe it might actually apply to me.’

‘Oh, rubbish. It’s just a word. If someone is fool enough to fund you doing what makes you happy then grab the chance,’ Helga says. ‘I’ve still got my pension from my last teaching job.’

‘I didn’t know you taught?’

‘Art. At a secondary school. For a few years.’

‘You? With children?’

‘Exactly. Teenagers,’ Helga says, with a mock shiver. ‘Hated the vile little bastards, with their petty hang-ups and silly language. When they asked me to leave, I did a little jig.’

‘Yeah, well, you suit retirement. You’re practised at your own company. I don’t know what I’ll do to make me feel useful.’

‘Of course you do. You should be a counsellor or a therapist, or whatever they call them. I admire you volunteering, but you should get paid for it.’

Dominica speeds up on the road ahead as they hit the motorway, seeing the countryside unfurling on either side, the trees bursting with buds. She admits to Helga that she’s already been looking at the various courses she’s found for retraining. The more she looks into it, the more excited she is about taking a step in this new direction.

They get on to talking about the others in the gang and how terrible it has been for Maddy to lose her home. Dominica has been intrigued about Helga’s admission in the sea. She so rarely gives anything personal away, but her confession clearly helped Maddy. ‘I was sorry to hear what you said the other day. About your boyfriend. About how he ripped you off.’

‘It doesn’t matter. That whole episode is ancient history.’

‘Were you desperately in love?’

‘No. Not really. I thought I was … but that’s the thing about hindsight … I can see that it was always doomed.’

Dominica is intrigued by the way she says it. Helga mostly holds her cards close to her chest, but she senses that she means that she was desperately in love with someone else. ‘So he wasn’t the one?’ she takes a punt.

‘Which one?’

‘You know, they say there’s “the one”.’

But Helga doesn’t answer.

The traffic is heavier now, people driving more erratically, and Dominica has to concentrate to get around the roundabout.

She thinks Helga has forgotten about it, but still looking out of the window the other way, she says, ‘No. Paul wasn’t the one. And what about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Will you move on from Chris? Find someone else? He’d have wanted that for you, surely?’

‘I haven’t thought about it.’

‘Haven’t you?’

‘No!’ Dominica says, trying not to sound as offended as she feels.