Meeting Heidi had been a mistake, but she was here now. She looked at herself in the mirror above the basin. She thought about the layout of the restaurant and whether she could leave without Heidi seeing her.

A woman paying her bill watched her as she walked back to the table. When she got there the food had arrived.

‘I’m almost positive you could carry “Peggy”,’ Heidi said.

‘It was your gut feeling,’ she said. ‘When you first saw me.’

Heidi nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure I only corrected myself to be polite. You know. We hate that.’

‘We hate that.’ Something settled a little bit. ‘Do it again,’ she said.

‘Peggy,’ Heidi said, but they both knew it wasn’t right. ‘That’s not going to work.’

‘No. It’s like the first time,’ she said. ‘It’s like I’m back how I was before the first time happened. But different. Missing something. Or with too much of something.’

The soup was hot. They blew on it. It was hard to tell when it was cool because there was so much spice in it. Even when it was cold, it bit. There were mushrooms and noodles in it and hunks of tofu, slippery between their chopsticks.

‘I don’t suppose . . .’ she said, but Heidi shook her head before she could finish.

‘Dell’s still here. I checked while you were in the bathroom.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s not really like that.’

‘No,’ Heidi said.

‘I don’t really know anyone else.’

‘Kitty and Erin?’ Heidi said.

‘Yeah, but I wouldn’t know how to get hold of them.’

‘Carola and Lotte?’

She frowned with her whole face. ‘Oh god,’ she said. ‘Carola and Lotte? I’d rather never know. I hate them.’

‘Yeah,’ Heidi said. ‘You’re right. I only really bump into them anyway. I don’t have a number or know where they work or anything.’

‘We’ve spent years trying to not be in the same place as them,’ she said, and then she groaned like she just couldn’t bring herself to think about Carola and Lotte.

‘Is there anyone else?’ Heidi asked.

There wasn’t. It had been such a limited thing in the tiny part of the town where they lived – between the four avenues – and only a split second. It was amazing there were as many of them as there were. People knew about them, but they were such a small moment in time.

‘Have you thought about Facebook?’

They both laughed. It felt good to laugh.

‘It really doesn’t matter,’ she said. She had tilted the bowl towards her and was using the ceramic spoon now. ‘Like, not really. It’s not like there’s anything to be done.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Heidi said. ‘Like, it will take you close to death. But you’ll be fine.’

‘Is that what it was like for you?’ she said. ‘When you left Dell?’