She attached the photo of her and Brenda by the river. It was a lovely photo: the trees were a deep green, sunlight sparkled off the river, she was smiling – she looked a little tired, but happy.

It was a new her. Her first day post-Ned. It was worth recording.

She finished her beer and got up to grab another. They were on the floor next to the bunk bed where Brenda was going to sleep. Alice bent down and picked one up, then reached for the bottle opener.

It was on the bed, next to a bottle cap, and Brenda’s keys to the room.

They were in a clear plastic pouch, with her name on it.

Brenda Yates.

Alice opened the beer and sat on the bed. She typed Brenda’s name into Facebook. A list of profiles came up, so she filtered on location.

Perth, Australia.

Alice scrolled back a few posts. She was interested to see Brenda back home – who her friends were, what she did, what her house was like. There was a photo of her with three other women, all about the same age. They were sitting around a pub table, plastic cups of beer stacked on it.

She pinched the screen to zoom in on Brenda.

It wasn’t her.

It wasn’t the same woman. She looked like Brenda – same long blonde hair, same tan – but it wasn’t her. They were similar – could have been sisters – but it was clearly not the Brenda who was in the shower.

It was a different Brenda Yates. It happened quite a lot – when you had the entire population of a city to choose from, it wasn’t a surprise to find two people with the same name.

The shower stopped and she heard Brenda moving about in the bathroom. Would it be weird to show her the other Brenda’s profile? She might think Alice was stalking her. But then again, people searched for other people on Facebook all the time.

Still, it was a bit creepy. And it was no more than an odd coincidence. Alice remembered what her maths teacher, Mrs Noble, had once explained to the class – coincidences should be expected. If you baked a cake, the raisins weren’t evenly distributed in the cake. They clustered – and events did the same. You could never know what the coincidence would be, but you should expect coincidences to happen.

And that was what was going on here. It was a coincidence that there were two people called Brenda Yates from Perth, and there was no point making Brenda think she was stalking her by showing the Facebook page to her.

But she could ask some questions. She was going to be a journalist after all. Asking questions was in her nature.

Brenda came out of the bathroom in jeans and a tank top. She was lean and muscular; there was a sense of hidden strength in the way she moved.