She finishes her post by adding a photo of Beth. She would never choose an unflattering one – that would overstep the mark of decency – but in Beth’s case those don’t exist anyway, so she picks the first one she can find and clicks upload.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Kat

Kat scrapes the soggy cornflakes into the bin and looks at the clock on the wall. She’s on late shift today, eleven ’til seven, which means she’s got fifteen minutes before she needs to leave for work. She holds the empty bowl under the tap and waits for the water to run hot. It takes ages as usual, and she shifts from foot to foot, trying not to think about how much perfectly good water she’s wasting in the process, all those different stages of purification, all that potential discarded. Finally the water runs warm enough to detach the last of the stubborn flakes, and she flips the bowl onto the drainer.

Her flat isn’t big, and the rooms all merge into one. The kitchen is too small for cupboards, so Kat keeps her crockery in the living room. But that means there’s no wall space for a TV in there, so she spends most of her time in the bedroom. Except her bedroom shares a wall – a couple of bits of plasterboard attached to a thin wooden frame – with the man who lives next door. She thinks it’s gaming that he’s doing, not actually shooting motherfuckers in the head, but either way, his shouting keeps her awake at night. So she falls asleep on the couch in the living room most evenings. It’s a fluid space, her flat.

Kat sighs as she drags her duvet off the blue velour sofa – a second-hand purchase from Gumtree when she could finally afford to move from her bedsit in Streatham – and walks the few steps to her bedroom, rolling her shoulders in an attempt to dislodge the crick in her neck. She launches the duvet into the air, and it lands in a heap on her bed. Then she walks three steps to her left and slips into the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind her and twisting the lock. It’s an unnecessary level of security for someone who lives alone, but her morning routine has always carried a sting of shame and it’s a hard habit to break.