She got her phone out and rang Diane. People started arriving for the meeting. It was all set up. She walked outside to talk on the phone and waved at them, smiling and indicating the phone. People smiled back. Some gave her sideways hugs, some rubbed her arm, some just smiled. It was that same feeling of being home that Peggy and Greta had found in the other city. Some strange kinship. She hadn’t noticed it for a while, but it was like this. It used to come over them when they weren’t fully expecting it. It felt like what they’d thought god must feel like.

Diane picked up. Margaret had walked a long way from the meeting room so no one would hear. The first bit of a conversation like this was the worst. The saying hello and asking how Diane was and answering when Diane asked her. She wanted to blurt it out. Always, she just wanted to shout it. For years they’d rehearsed everything, worked out how to make the thing they’d done sound the best it could. But in the last few years, since the angry bottle of wine that had turned up at their flat, they’d just wanted to blurt things out using whatever language they could summon.

‘I’ve been going to bars a lot,’ she said when Diane asked how she was. ‘By myself.’

‘What for?’ Diane said.

‘Sex,’ she said. ‘Mainly.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

‘The sex?’

‘Yeah, if you want,’ said Diane.

‘I like the sex,’ she said.

‘We all like the sex.’ They both laughed.

‘I’m just not sure about the bars.’

‘Hm,’ Diane said.

‘Or the way I’m getting the sex.’ There was a certain kind of power in being a sober person at a bar full of drunk people, which Margaret was increasingly uncomfortable with. ‘That’s probably what’s eating me up the most,’ she said. ‘If I’m honest.’

‘Being around all that booze must be tricky too,’ Diane said.

‘Yeah,’ Margaret said. She felt more and more like she was in the wrong place.

‘Sometimes I tell myself I’m going somewhere for one reason and actually there’s another reason I can’t quite see,’ Diane said.

‘Yeah,’ said Margaret. ‘There could be a bit of that.’

‘Sometimes I get a bit of a hit off just being around the stuff,’ said Diane.

‘Yeah,’ Margaret said.