They watched her run back to the game and take her place again and someone served the ball and Heidi hit it back. Peggy and Greta had never fought, in all the time they’d known each other. They’d niggled at each other, little remarks here and there, but never a painful disagreement. Never anything like Dell and Heidi. At the beginning, everyone had tried to lump them together. It was just the normal kind of bigotry. People tried to make people who were different from them all the same. But none of the pairs were the same.

‘Do you feel like noodles?’ asked Peggy.

Greta thought for a moment. ‘Yeah,’ she said, surprising herself.

‘Malaysian noodles?’ Peggy said.

‘Tom yum?’ Greta said, and Peggy nodded, and they walked down past the arts centre and then past the place where the record store used to be.

‘I like it better like this,’ Greta said, and Peggy nodded. ‘Like, I can deal with it the other way. I’ll live. I did live. I even thrived, maybe. But I like it better like this.’

‘It’s not the natural way of being,’ Peggy said. ‘But I agree.’

‘It’s the natural way for us,’ Greta said, and Peggy nodded. ‘Like, once there were two of us, I realised why it hadn’t been working.’ She was looking out over the street. ‘Like life.’

‘Yeah,’ Greta said.

‘We’re lucky,’ Peggy said.

‘Blessed,’ Greta said, and they both mock-shuddered and laughed. They looked up in time to see a woman walking towards them.

‘Carola?’ Peggy said. The woman looked up, and didn’t respond at first. Then, ‘Peggy?’ she said. ‘Greta.’ And she hugged them both.

‘Where’s Lotte?’ Greta asked. The woman looked strange, alone, somehow naked or under-dressed, or in the wrong place.

‘Who?’ she said. And someone going past on a bike stopped and said, ‘Charlotte?’ And the woman turned, because Charlotte was her name.

‘Hi, Joan,’ Charlotte said. ‘These are my friends – Greta and Peggy.’ And they all said hello and had a short conversation about where everyone was going: Charlotte – home, Joan – to a meeting. And they talked a bit about things – work, mainly. Then they all said goodbye and went their separate ways.

The noodle shop was full, but there were two seats at the end of a long table. Greta and Peggy sat down, and no one even looked. Except the people already sitting at the table, and then just to say hello. The forgetting, the ignoring – in one sense it was a kindness. It gave them space to work things out. There was a hubbub in the restaurant. The hard walls echoed it. Greta and Peggy looked over the menu even though they knew what they were going to order, because there was still a chance that something else would take their fancy, but they wanted tom yum even while they were looking at the menu.