Heidi had probably saved Margaret’s life. After she was alone, Margaret saw what was going on and it made her dangerous. She said things and did things and hurt people and she only stayed sober so that she didn’t miss anything. ‘Was that always there?’ she’d say to Heidi, because Heidi was the last one who would hang out with her. ‘What?’ Heidi would say, tired. ‘That box of matches,’ Margaret would say, and she’d write it in her notebook, not even hiding it from Heidi now. There was nothing Heidi could say, but she stayed. She made Margaret go for walks, and Margaret would say things like, ‘Does that tree look the same as that other tree? Are they running out of tree designs? Is that what happened to us?’

In the end it was only Margaret running out of will that brought her back. She realised no one would ever understand – it hadn’t happened to anyone else they knew, and to the rest of the women who looked exactly like each other, what had happened to Peggy and Greta seemed like a blessing. Poof and she was one again. One day, looking at Heidi’s face, she realised that all her shouting and explaining wasn’t changing anything and that if she kept it up her life would be worse – so she shut up. It wasn’t about winning, it was about surviving. They were living in a sandbox. Like the small people in the rollercoaster park, if there was any point it had nothing to do with them. There was no meaning to wrestle from anything. Nothing she could do would change anything. Dell was dead, and maybe there was some peace in death, but nothing was what it seemed and maybe the end she dreamed of didn’t exist and it was just more pain, so Margaret gave up, even on that. How she lived now was under the weight of a deep despair, by herself, with the knowledge of what they were dealing with.

‘Is it fennel?’ Heidi asked. ‘Oh, no, that’s the fennel bulb.’ She pointed at the two bulbs sitting next to each other. ‘It’s not a potato.’

Margaret shook her head.

‘Wait.’ Heidi picked up the vegetable again. ‘Is that kohlrabi?’

Margaret googled ‘kohlrabi’ and held up the screen to Heidi. Everything was in their phones now. Their whole lives and the whole world in slim black screens that could do anything.

‘Maybe?’ Heidi said.

‘Ash would know,’ Margaret said.

‘They certainly would,’ Heidi said.

Margaret and Heidi stood in silence and looked at the vegetable, but it wasn’t giving anything away.

‘Do you want to stay for dinner?’ said Margaret.

‘Do you have work?’ Heidi was looking at her phone now. Double-tapping pictures on Instagram, flicking back and forth to Twitter.

Margaret looked at her phone. ‘Yeah. But you could, like, watch something? Or just hang out until dinner.’