‘Yeah,’ Heidi said through a mouthful of noodles. ‘No. Look, Dell is just a thorn in my fucking side. I don’t miss her at all. If you’ve got to be alone, it’s much easier if it happens like this – the same way you got not-alone.’

She nodded. There was a clear space on every side of her. She kept turning to watch herself, but she wasn’t there. She hadn’t had to carry on a whole conversation for a long time. Not for twelve years. It was all wrong. She was working with every ounce of her strength to keep herself sitting at the table and eating the noodles. They were hot. The soup burned her mouth numb. First her tongue, then, with the next mouthful, the roof of her mouth and in between her teeth. Soon her whole mouth was bigger, swollen with the scald. Heidi wasn’t talking much anymore. She was blowing on her soup and looking at her phone beside her on the table.

‘Margaret,’ Heidi said, and shook her head.

‘I know,’ she said.

‘Who the fuck calls their kid Margaret?’ asked Heidi.

‘My drunk mum,’ said Margaret, through her numb mouth.

‘It’s terrible.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Patron saint of expectant mothers,’ Heidi said, and they both started laughing. ‘Your mother was a narcissist.’

‘She told me it meant pearl,’ Margaret said.

‘She would,’ Heidi said.

‘Heathen,’ Margaret said, and then, ‘Fuck.’

‘You could just take one of the other ones. People shorten their names all the time.’

‘It doesn’t seem right,’ she said. ‘People get upset. They think I’m trying to fuck with them.’

‘It’s a terrible name.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s my name.’

‘People change their names all the time,’ Heidi said.

‘If I change it, I have to do things – bureaucratically. If I don’t change it, I have to do nothing – less than nothing.’

‘What will you do about work?’ Heidi said. There was something in her tone and in her eyes. She could see opportunities opening up. ‘You can’t do both jobs.’

Margaret shrugged. ‘I kind of have been,’ she said finally.

Heidi looked over her spoon.

‘I can’t sleep,’ she said.

‘Is that sustainable?’ Heidi put down her spoon and wiped her mouth with the serviette.

‘I can’t actually see any other way through,’ said Margaret.

Heidi didn’t say anything.

‘I need both jobs to pay for the flat and everything.’

‘There’s only one of you eating now,’ Heidi said.

‘I’m not sure it will make a huge difference,’ she said. ‘The real cost is the rent.’

‘You could get a credit card now,’ Heidi said. ‘Like, a proper one and a proper job. Now there’s just one of you.’

‘I’ll need proof,’ she said.