Heidi turned up with Ian on the fifth day. She said they all needed to stay out of her life. That her life was her life. Especially Dell, Dell could stay the fuck out. Heidi and Dell hadn’t met many men like Ian. Greta and Peggy saw it on that day. They had rich parents who sent them to private and expensive counsellors and self-improvement courses before they went to rehab. It was possible Heidi and Dell had only met nice men. It was possible that Heidi thought Ian was a nice man under a big barrel of sadness and that if she could wash away that sadness she’d be left with just the nice man. Then Heidi started coming home with bruises on her arms and then just to get clean clothes and then with a black eye and with the sharp tang of vomit on her. Peggy and Greta and Dell watched her go back and forth from the laundry to her room to the kitchen, pleading with her. Then she said if they really wanted to help, maybe they could loan her, like, twenty bucks, and then everyone started shouting and Dell punched Heidi and Heidi threatened to call the police. Dell and Heidi were already on parole for drink-driving, so Peggy and Greta gave her the twenty-eight dollars from the jar by the oven they’d saved for the electricity bill, and then Heidi left and Dell, Peggy and Greta sat in silence and worried about how they would pay the electricity bill and whether Heidi had moved out. But she hadn’t. She still had a key and they were sure she was sneaking in when none of them were there.

‘You’d think we would have seen her.’ Peggy looked intently at the chopsticks and the fork she was balancing them on. ‘Like, in town.’ The chopsticks fell off the fork and almost rolled onto the floor before she could catch them. ‘It’s small here.’

Greta nodded. ‘Maybe she just stays at his house now. With Ian.’

Peggy nodded. ‘Maybe.’