Then Heidi arrived and they all hugged, and she sat at the table. Although no one she’d met in this city knew that Heidi had been Heidi to a Dell, it was more comfortable for people if she sat against a wall and didn’t draw too much attention to the space beside her. Because people had learned to read Heidi and Dell as one when they were together, they imagined that by themselves they looked more like a half. It was more disconcerting, it appeared, when one of them lived a long way away from the other. There was an imbalance to it that no one could put their finger on – it was just a bad feeling about the woman by herself, something like animosity or frustration. While they went all sorts of places by themselves now, people could tell if they hadn’t seen each other for a while, hadn’t been in each other’s company, in physical contact. Heidi had experimented and, she told Peggy and Greta, it seemed it was not being close to Dell that made her more disconcerting to others. There was nothing she could do about that though. Dell wouldn’t come and Heidi had no desire to travel back to the city where they’d all lived in the flat when they first got sober. It was an impasse – like they were in a battle of wills with each other. So Heidi patched it over with politeness and consideration. Heidi talked to Peggy and Greta about these things, which made them uneasy, but all they could do was listen and nod. They were all patching something over with politeness and consideration. They couldn’t afford to be rude.

‘You two look nice,’ she said.