When Heidi and Dell walked in the door, Greta and Peggy knew something was wrong. It wasn’t anything as spooky or arrogant as ‘vibes’, it was something in the way they moved around each other in the room. Where they were standing and moving in relation to each other. They kept reaching for the same things and bumping into each other and not apologising, just looking at each other – neither of them willing to give an inch, both trying to take up the same space. Greta and Peggy tried to make calming conversation. It just made Heidi and Dell angrier.

‘It wasn’t a good day. It was a shit day.’

‘It might have been a shit day for you, but that’s because you’re not paying any attention to me.’

Greta and Peggy retreated to the kitchen and worked on the dinner. It seemed like the safest place. They weren’t helping. It felt like nothing was going to help at this point.

The omelette had come out okay, but it had been sitting for a while in the oven, staying warm, drying out. By the time everything went on the plates it looked pretty bad. The broccoli was over-steamed. Greta said she didn’t realise you could even over-steam something. Peggy agreed. It seemed like something that was self-monitoring. Like things would just stop when they were steamed enough and not go further. But here they were, in the kitchen – Heidi and Dell bitching and moaning at each other a couple of feet away. Peggy and Greta looked down at the plates and they looked terrible. The potatoes were browned but they were also raw inside. Hard. It was a very bad dinner and it looked like it was sizing up to be a bad night. Greta and Peggy looked at each other. They’d serve it, of course they would, because there was nothing else and they’d bought this with their twenty dollars each and there was no time to start anything else. Peggy wondered if maybe they could boil the potatoes. They were roasted on the outside and she wasn’t quite sure what would happen to the crisp outsides if they boiled them now but maybe it was worth them being soggy if they were cooked. They both poked at the plate with a knife.

‘Is there dinner or not?’ Dell shouted from the dining table.

Faking it seemed like two-fifths of it. If they could convince themselves, maybe they could convince Heidi and Dell.

‘Coming,’ Greta shouted, and they looked at each other again.