Heidi laughed loudly and abruptly. The other three looked at her. She looked up. ‘Trouble in paradise.’ She smiled.

‘We could buy a carrot on the way,’ Peggy said.

‘And grate it at work?’ Greta said.

Peggy made a face like ‘Why not?’

‘I’m brushing my teeth again,’ Greta said.

‘Me too,’ Peggy said, racing to put the sandwiches in a plastic bag and that bag in their army surplus bag.

They stood side by side, brushing their teeth.

‘Before we got sober,’ Greta said, through the brush and the foam of the cheap non-mouthwash toothpaste, ‘we always had enough money for food.’

Peggy shook her head.

They both brushed for a bit then Peggy spat. ‘You’re remembering it wrong,’ she said.

‘I don’t think I am,’ Greta said.

‘We never ate,’ Peggy said, leaning low so she could drink water out of the tap to rinse her mouth.

‘But if we wanted to.’ Greta had the toothbrush in her mouth and was using her hands to signal. ‘We had the money to eat whatever we wanted. Or the means.’

‘I don’t agree,’ Peggy said.

Greta rolled her eyes. It was on the tip of her tongue – those fucking terrible sandwiches. She wanted a new pair of stockings and she wanted to have some fucking fun. Instead, groceries and another fucking meeting.

‘Maybe there’ll be something at work.’ Peggy was applying mascara now. Sometimes one of the bakeries in the area dropped in food that no one had bought the day before. There wasn’t much that was vegetarian, but sometimes Peggy and Greta would open up the filled rolls, take out the ham and pretend.

‘We did have money,’ Greta said.