None of them said anything for a moment while they thought about whether she did. Dell was in the other city in the other island an hour’s flight from where they were. She’d stolen a car and crashed the car and run away.

‘But she’s in trouble,’ Peggy said.

‘She could come and stay here.’ Greta looked at her coffee. They were in a busy café. Heidi had been on the phone when Peggy and Greta arrived. Peggy and Greta had ordered coffee. Greta had got cake – it was her turn to eat in public.

Heidi shook her head and screwed up her face a bit. Dell was always involved in something, but they’d never had to have this particular conversation in public. None of them knew exactly how to do it around so many nice people having brunch, and it seemed that now it was underway there was no stopping it.

‘Maybe you can do something?’ Peggy asked.

‘Can I, though?’ Heidi laughed.

‘You can’t just leave her,’ Greta said. None of them had any idea for whose benefit she was saying that – not even Greta. Maybe she thought the people at the next table could hear them. Maybe she thought this was the way to have this conversation.

‘No,’ Peggy said, taking Greta’s lead, but they all knew she was talking theoretically. From what they’d seen, you couldn’t leave someone when they were in trouble.

‘Was that the police?’ Peggy asked.

‘No.’ Heidi looked at them as if maybe this was going on a bit long and they didn’t need to put on a full melodrama. ‘She ran away.’

Peggy and Greta looked around but the other people in the café didn’t seem to give a fuck. Maybe the whole show was unnecessary. Maybe they could all just sit there quietly.

‘So, who was on the phone?’ Peggy said. ‘How did you find out?’

Heidi looked bored with the whole thing. ‘I found that.’ She pointed to a palm-sized game console with an LCD screen that was lying beside her coffee cup and saucer.

‘Is that a Game & Watch?’ Peggy said, picking it up.

Greta looked around. ‘Has that been there the whole time?’ She was pointing at where the console had been, next to the coffee cup and saucer.

‘It’s Lion,’ Peggy said. She was playing the game now, and the high-pitched vibrato that came out of it cut through the sound of the café.

‘It’s from when I was a kid,’ Heidi said, ‘and it made me think about Dell and I called her, and she just wanted to check that I’d used the credit card in the last hour.’

‘Why?’ Greta said.

‘Alibi,’ Peggy said, not looking up from the game.

‘Where was it?’ Greta said, wanting more than anything to look around again.

‘It was in my bag,’ Heidi said.