She walked the house, opening other doors, but she knew. She’d known from the second it had happened. A chill ran over her, like someone had skinned her. Like her muscle and viscera were out in the air. She could feel every hair on her head and when she blinked she felt her eyelids slide over her eyes. Her teeth felt too big for her single mouth. She opened it and moved her jaw side to side. The house was unfamiliar to her. But it was hers. The clothes were hers. The computers. The job. There were two phones on the table. She moved tentatively towards the bathroom. There were still two toothbrushes on the bench, and she reached out for them but couldn’t quite reach from the door and didn’t want to go in, in case the bathroom door shut.

There were messages on the phones, but none were to do with this. She needed to talk to Heidi, and Heidi was the last person she should talk to. She needed to get herself straight before she talked to Heidi.

It got darker, and colder. And she sat in the frame of the door again and looked at the hinges. She got up occasionally, walked around the house, and then came back to the door and the hinges. She’d find herself there, like it was a surprise. She’d think, ‘This is ridiculous, I should get up.’ And then half an hour later she would find herself still there, her mind having been somewhere else. Then she got up and found herself on the floor again, in the doorway in between the bedroom and kitchen. Then it was two in the morning and one of them had to be at work in seven hours and one of them had to be in front of the computer to moderate the comments and write the code that was due by lunchtime. She needed to work out which one was easier to call in sick for. Was she sick? They were not sick. Did she need to tell Duncan? Was it that sort of situation? Theoretically there was only one of them, on paper, in pay, in tax, but did Duncan need to know that now there really was just one of them? Would she keep her job if there was only one of her? Would people miss the other one? Which one would she be? She tried out both names but had no idea. The names were no use. Names were for everyone else. There had only been a Greta so there could be a not-Peggy and vice versa. It was just a convenience. The names had just come. They’d talked about it in whispers in the dark, inches away from each other so no one would overhear and think they were crazy. ‘Some people call me Peggy.’ ‘That one guy used to call me Greta.’