‘Do you talk to each other before you start?’ she asked Ash.

‘Not always,’ Ash said, without stopping.

‘How do you know when to change?’

‘Oh,’ Ash said. ‘We need healers. I can play a healer.’

‘Does everyone do that?’

Ash shrugged. ‘Mostly.’

‘What if you don’t want to?’ said Margaret.

Ash shrugged. ‘I guess we lose.’

‘Oh,’ Margaret said. ‘Cool.’

*

Dinner was nice. Heidi and Margaret were back to normal. Everyone laughed and ate and talked about things. Bisi and Heidi had made a lentil loaf. ‘Like it’s 1972,’ Heidi said, and they all laughed. Ash had made a salad. They’d eaten all of it and now were using pieces of bread to soak up the dressing at the bottom of the bowl. Heidi was looking at her phone.

‘Did you bring dessert?’ she asked.

‘Oh,’ Margaret said. ‘Yes.’

Heidi looked at her phone again. She seemed a bit on edge, like she was waiting for something. ‘Well, go on then.’

‘Oh,’ Margaret said. ‘Yeah. I’ll go and get it.’

She went to the kitchen to get the cake. She took her time, put some of the plates in the dishwasher. The conversation in the dining room became quieter, like they didn’t want her to hear something. She disregarded it. It was probably just Ash talking. They talked more quietly than Bisi and Heidi. She wiped down the bench and put a pot in the sink and filled it with warm water and detergent so it would soak. As she walked into the dining room, someone dropped something on the table.

‘What are you doing?’ she said, both of her.

‘I just don’t think you two need this anymore,’ Heidi said. Peggy and Greta’s handbag was on the table and their wallet was beside it, and Heidi was holding the Tamagotchi phone. ‘Like, we could just get rid of it.’

They were in the dining room now – Peggy and Greta, fully through the doorway, all of them in the dining room. No part of them left in the kitchen. Standing right arm to identical left arm, like the seams hadn’t fully come clean yet.

‘Oh,’ they said.

Bisi and Ash were looking at them now, laughing. Laughing about the Tamagotchi phone and how ridiculous it was that Peggy and Greta had it. But Heidi wasn’t laughing. Her eyes held something of a plea in them. ‘Like, we could just throw it away,’ she said.