They hurried a bit to lock up. Often, when they were halfway to the five-thirty meeting, one of them would say, ‘Did we check the changing rooms?’ and they’d both fall silent. One day they told Diane, and Diane recommended making a checklist. Just for themselves, in their notebook. And it worked, but not always. The things they did every day didn’t often settle in their memory. They read somewhere that you needed to tell yourself what you were doing. ‘I am locking the front door.’ ‘I am brushing my teeth.’ Otherwise it didn’t stick. Their short-term memories were a bit fucked. Alcohol did that. People would ask, ‘Where were you?’ and they’d shrug. It was hard to remember things. But they knew where the meetings were. And if they forgot, they had a folded A4 sheet of paper with all the meetings on it and it was always in their pocket or their bag.

Today it was sunny. There was a bit of heat in it. It would be full spring soon. Peggy and Greta had fifteen minutes to get to the hall. It wasn’t far away. Mainly, the people who went to the five-thirty meeting were workers. They had gone a lot before they started at the shop because it meant they could get to three meetings in a day, but they particularly liked to go now they were workers too. There were quite a few cars. The central city wasn’t that busy, but people drove through it to get places. They didn’t say much on the walk. They thought a lot. Too much probably. Today they were worrying whether Tyra would call them, or if she’d called the police.

‘Surely we would have heard?’ Peggy said, finally, pushing the pedestrian crossing button over and over. A woman stood next to them, looking at them both.

‘You’d think so.’ Greta was looking out to the hills. Peggy was looking down and pushing the button over and over. Someone had told her it made the cross sign go faster and they were always in a hurry. Which wasn’t true – they thought they were in a hurry but they were just impatient. Wanted everything to happen faster and then when it did felt sad it had passed so fast. They’d feel that way about life, soon, how they had wished away the first weeks and months of their sobriety when in reality magical things were happening to both of them and they were walking past them every day.

‘But could she be talking to the police and it’s just taking a while?’ Greta said.

‘She’s a bit of a fuck-up,’ Peggy said, and Greta nodded. They could only say that because they were fuck-ups too.