‘Wow,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even know people could make these. I thought there was a factory.’ They all laughed. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘We have a table for food.’ She walked them over to a couple of trestle tables that had been set up and covered with white butcher’s paper.

Peggy and Greta put down the platter and the pastries and picked up a paper cup and filled it with the sparkling water they’d brought in Peggy’s handbag. Then they stood to the side and watched.

By quarter to nine, the hall was at least half full and people had started dancing. Heidi arrived carrying a couple of pizzas. She leaned in and air-kissed the hosts on both cheeks, then walked over to Peggy and Greta, who hadn’t moved far from the food tables.

‘Hi,’ said Heidi. It might have been the unfamiliar setting or maybe it was the uneasy conversation they’d had in the café, but it occurred to Peggy and Greta that it could be Dell. That it was all an elaborate hoax. That despite all of Heidi’s remonstrations, she and Dell were working together – in some kind of co-op play. They hadn’t seen or talked to Dell in years. They looked at Heidi’s scars – counting them off. The scars had settled over time and there was better make-up now. She always wore her hair over the ear there was only half of. Maybe Dell and Heidi were alternating in the role of Heidi. It was a mindfuck, and for a minute Peggy and Greta couldn’t do anything but stare. They’d all been so close. Slept under the same roof for years. When Heidi had come home after being with Ian, they’d helped her get back on her feet. They’d shared the weirdest experience and now Peggy and Greta realised they were as much in the dark as everyone else. They had no way of telling them apart or proving that what Heidi had been telling them about Dell or about the accident or herself was true. Everything Heidi and Dell wanted could be solved if they could be one again. Had they found a way to do it?

‘How’s Dell?’ Peggy said it. It came out unmeasured and sounded wrong.