They weren’t sure they could do it again, so they avoided the house and walked a strange elliptical route to the short mall where the Thai place was.

‘Hello,’ the woman at the counter said. ‘One tom yum soup?’ They both nodded. ‘With two noodles?’ she asked.

‘One noodles,’ Greta said, and the woman nodded and Peggy and Greta sat down.

The hot soup always made their stomach play up. Peggy thought it was the mushrooms but Greta said she was dreaming. ‘It’s really spicy,’ Greta said. ‘Our stomach sucks.’ They’d spent a lot of time vomiting. Vomiting because they were piss-crook, vomiting because they drank too much, vomiting because they were too fat. How could they expect their stomachs to work properly, now? Especially when they poured spoonfuls of fiery hot soup into them.

They sat at a table near the door and Peggy played with the chopsticks.

‘Did Dell say Heidi had been home?’ Greta asked.

Peggy shook her head.

‘I wish she’d come home,’ Greta said.

‘Me too,’ Peggy said. The guy Heidi was with was dangerous and awful. His name was Ian. He lived way out in a place that was like the country. In a house on a big swathe of land. Ian was in the meetings but he always shared about how much he hated them. How men didn’t like him. How he thought everyone else in the meetings was fake. The first time they met him, Peggy and Greta raised their eyebrows at each other. They knew men like Ian. Staying away from men like Ian was a big part of how their new life was going to be different. Peggy had seen him come up to Greta after the meeting. She was across the room picking up ashtrays. She shouted, ‘Greta, we’ve got that thing.’ And Greta said, ‘Oh yeah,’ and apologised to him and went to help Peggy. He’d cornered both of them at a meeting a few days later and told them he knew what they were up to with the whole ‘We have that thing’ routine. Peggy looked at the ground the whole time he got in her face, telling her if one of them wanted to talk to him, they could talk to him, telling them they didn’t own each other, despite what it looked like. Diane had a word with him and he had never spoken to either of them again. Diane was hardcore. They both said it to each other. Like, she wasn’t perfect, no one was perfect, but she was pretty fucking awesome – for someone who didn’t drink.