Margaret put the charger down and laid the phone on the table next to it. She hardly needed to check. The phone sat in the dock perfectly and the charging port clicked into place. Margaret rested the notebook on her knee under the table. Charger she wrote without looking. She put the last of the sandwich in her mouth and stood up. She held the phone in the dock with the power cord leading out of it like a tail. She looked around her. There was a powerboard under the table, and she plugged it into one of the travel adapters that was plugged into the socket.

‘What’s that?’ Heidi asked.

Margaret shrugged.

Heidi looked around. ‘You need to get out more.’

Margaret nodded, then she remembered. ‘I was out this afternoon,’ she said.

‘Where’d you go?’ Heidi asked.

‘Out,’ she said. The phone was too low to turn on yet. She left it sitting on the floor beside the powerboard. She’d have to leave it for a while.

‘You need to clean up as well,’ Heidi said.

Margaret looked around. ‘It’s hard.’

‘I know,’ Heidi said. ‘We all know. Everyone. But you just need a system. Maybe you need a smaller place, now.’

‘I’m working from here now,’ Margaret said.

‘Oh?’ Heidi looked up.

‘I quit the call centre.’ She was wiping crumbs off the table with her finger. ‘I’m going to work at home.’

Heidi frowned in a way designed to show she was thinking, and she nodded. ‘Sounds like a good idea.’

Margaret nodded.

‘Things are going to be so much fucking easier for you now,’ Heidi said. ‘You can claim back the office, the internet, computers and clothes. You only have to look after yourself. You can get a driver’s licence and a passport. You can travel.’

Margaret nodded. She was digging a trough between the sprinkled crumbs on the table.

‘It’s just, Greta . . .’ Heidi said.

‘Margaret,’ she said.

Heidi made a face like it was all sinking in. Like she was planning her next move, in the light of some new move that Margaret didn’t realise she’d made.

‘I told you,’ Margaret said. ‘When we had tom yum.’

‘You didn’t seem convinced.’ Heidi was turning a page in the circular over then back.

‘I’m convinced now.’

‘Really?’

Margaret looked around the kitchen. ‘For now,’ she said.

‘Makes sense,’ Heidi said and looked through the junk mail some more. Then she looked up. ‘We could go for a walk?’

‘I have to work,’ Margaret said. The phone’s small red light was flashing less and less. It was charging up.