‘Mm, not sure that’s such a good idea, sweetheart. You’re already doing so much designing the leaflets – don’t want to put too much on you.’

‘What? Come on. I want to get involved in this. Use me.’

‘I’ll do it with Sammi,’ said Clio. ‘We could bring a bit of common touch to this, nah?’

Fran bristled at the sink, went silent. Sammi’s eyes went to Mark, who was sitting back on his heels, taking it all in.

Clio and Sammi fared much better on the street outside the building site – people were at least taking their leaflets, and both of them managed a couple of conversations, even though Clio, emboldened, tried to get a group of young guys about Sammi’s age involved and had one of them yell at her to fuck off and leave Maccy D’s alone. Sammi tried hard to keep herself busy, so she wouldn’t have to talk to Clio – she could tell that Clio really wanted to get serious with her – could see the orange head always turned towards her out of the corner of her eye when there was nobody there, kept her face trained along the road towards the next passer-by.

After a couple of hours, Clio said that that was quite enough for now and suggested they get some lunch. Sammi couldn’t think of an excuse quickly, and so they ended up opposite each other on hard chairs, unwrapping plastic off a pair of egg sandwiches, looking down at the table. Clio stirred three sugars into a Styrofoam cup and coughed, and coughed again, and Sammi couldn’t bear it any more.

‘Is there something you wanted to say to me, Clio?’

She jumped, spilled her coffee. ‘Yes – no. Well. It’s just – it feels strange to me. And I suppose we should talk about it.’

‘You want to talk about you fucking my boyfriend a lot. That it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Well, I don’t really want to talk about it with you, so how about that?’

‘I don’t really know what to say anyway.’

‘I mean, I don’t like it. But it’s not like I got grounds for official complaint. Maybe I thought we was better friends than we are for you to be doing – that – this much. Maybe I’d like you to stop. But I can’t ask that. See?’

‘I see. I’ll stop, Sammi. It’ll stop.’

‘Whatever. I got leaflets to hand out. Shall we get back to it?’

‘I mean it.’

‘Sure.’