‘Hi, Kadie,’ said Peggy.

‘How are you?’

‘Pretty good,’ said Peggy, and climbed in the back. ‘The others are just coming.’

‘Oh,’ said Kadie. ‘Cool. No rush. Did you go to the picnic?’

‘For a bit,’ Peggy said. ‘We made a quiche.’

‘Cool,’ Kadie said.

‘It was more of a frittata,’ Peggy said. The others were leaving the house now. Locking it up.

‘Baking, Greta,’ Kadie said. ‘Wow.’

‘Yeah. Cool, eh?’ said Peggy.

The others climbed in.

‘Heidi,’ Kadie said. ‘Great to see you.’

Heidi said hi.

‘Dell.’

‘Hi.’

‘Peggy. Hi,’ Kadie said.

‘Greta,’ Greta said.

‘Sorry?’ Kadie was probably looking at Peggy now for some kind of explanation, but Peggy was looking out the window so she couldn’t see her.

‘I’m Greta,’ said Greta. ‘That’s Peggy.’

‘Oh,’ Kadie said. ‘Cool.’

The meeting was in a community hall above a library. As they walked up the stairs there were people ready to greet them. Erin was greeting, and Kitty was in the kitchen getting the tea and coffee ready. Erin was shaking everyone’s hand. You had to walk through the kitchen to get to your seat. Greta and Peggy always sat three rows back and four seats in. They’d been told by Diane to try to always sit in the same seat. That way, if they weren’t there, someone would notice and wonder why and call them. People were saying hello to Heidi. Everyone was happy to see her, although most people probably hadn’t noticed she’d been gone. Dell hadn’t missed a meeting, and although she had looked sad and lonely because they were usually always together, people filled in the gap that was there. Anything unusual about them needed to be brushed over. Seeing one of them by themselves had become something unusual. That’s what seemed to be happening. Peggy and Greta talked about it a lot. No one wanted to know they were there. It was too hard. They knew what it meant if there were two of you. They knew what sort of woman you were. What sort of things you’d done. It had only happened to the drunkest women. Only the most blacked-out. When they looked at women like Peggy and Greta or Heidi and Dell, a discomfort went over them. A mix of horror and shame – knowing it could have been them, but disgusted all the same. So, no one mentioned it and slowly it was just going away. They talked themselves into it without talking about it. Each person was helping out with a new reality. If nobody saw it, there was soon nothing to see. Except for the women who were in two places at once. The ones who saw themselves.

‘Why’d you do that?’ Greta asked.

Peggy looked at her with high eyebrows, like she wasn’t quite sure what Greta was talking about.

‘In the van?’

Peggy didn’t say anything.