Peggy shrugged in the dark.

‘She’s so angry,’ Greta said. ‘All the time.’

‘If she’s not angry, she’s mean,’ said Peggy. She leaned over, trying to put her hand on something in the dark.

‘What are you doing?’ Greta said.

‘The notebook,’ she said. ‘For the calls. There was one last night.’ The notebook was getting full. Dell had helped them rule columns on each page – date, time. Peggy wrote on the inside cover in the dark. The inside cover was a mess. Usually they put the date there and then copied it into the columns later.

Greta shifted and the pillow sort of scrunched. Then she shifted her head around on it. ‘We should get some new pillows,’ she said. ‘These pillows are shit.’

‘Yeah,’ Peggy answered. ‘They’re okay if you put both of them together but they’re awful by themselves.’

‘Yeah,’ Greta said. Still moving her head about.

‘Why the fuck did we get such awful pillows?’ When they first went to the dole office they’d been given a small amount of money to set up the flat.

‘What were we thinking?’ Peggy asked.

‘They were on special,’ Greta said. ‘At Briscoes.’

‘You get what you pay for,’ said Peggy.

‘There was a sale on,’ Peggy said and they both laughed. It was an in-joke that they’d only got now they were in a flat and making a house and not moving from place to place with just what they had in their bag. Relying on who they could pick up and sometimes sleeping outside or in cars they could break into. Now they were privileged to get all sorts of jokes they’d never got before.

‘A sale,’ Peggy said, and she was drifting off.

‘A sale.’ Greta let out one last huffing laugh. ‘A sale.’

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