The thirtieth birthday party was on a Saturday night. Peggy and Greta spent the day making a platter of roast capsicums and tiny pastry packages filled with spiced potato and peas. They roasted aubergine and made baba ganoush and cooked the chickpeas they’d soaked overnight for hummus. By about six they were finished, and Peggy put on some music and they danced around the house trying on outfits and doing their hair and putting on make-up. The party started at eight and they aimed to be there about quarter past. It was hard hosting during that very start bit when no one was turning up and you wondered if anyone would. They probably wouldn’t stay long, so they were fine with being part of the first shift.

‘You look nice,’ Peggy said. They were doing final touches in front of the big mirror on the dresser in their bedroom.

‘Aw, cheers,’ Greta said and hugged her. ‘You too. I like that T-shirt with that skirt.’

‘Thanks,’ Peggy said. ‘You invented it.’

‘Huh?’ Greta was putting in some earrings so wasn’t totally listening.

‘You wore them together a couple of months ago.’ Peggy used the knuckle of her pointer finger to pull a tiny smudge of lipstick back into the boundary of her lips.

‘Oh,’ Greta said. She was applying more mascara now, her mouth open. She stood back. ‘I remember now. Well, it looks good on you.’ They both laughed.

They were chatting because it wasn’t a normal night. They were excited and also they were getting ready for being around people – there were so many things that could go wrong in such an unusual setting. They needed to be prepared.

The taxi arrived and they carried the platter and pastries down the path. There weren’t many people in the hall when they got there. The big empty room was decorated with crêpe-paper streamers and some fairy lights. There was a rented sound system and some lights that spun around the room and every now and then hit the disco ball hung from the centre of the ceiling. The decorations and the lights made the space seem even bigger and emptier. The music was loud and bouncing off the walls with no bodies to soften it. The three people having the party were standing in a huddle near one of the speakers talking to each other when Peggy and Greta walked in. The woman who had invited them turned round, smiled broadly and walked over to hug them.

‘It’s so good to see you.’ She looked at the platter and the baskets of pastries and said, ‘Thank you. Wow. Did you buy these?’

Peggy and Greta shook their heads.