She was sitting on the bed, leaning over her knees to tie her shoelaces, and Beth, watching her from across the room, experienced an unexpected pang of loneliness. Ever since her return, Corinne had been quiet, withdrawn, choosing to spend hours in Mark’s studio, silently working on a matchstick miniature cathedral modelled on Notre Dame. In the evening, after dinner, she had sat and watched 13 Reasons Why with Beth, but Corinne’s eyes had been heavy-lidded and dull, and she had sat apart from her in a distant armchair. Beth remembered with a pang the way they used to lounge together on the sofa with their legs entwined, the way Corinne would sometimes play with her hair or run her fingertips along Beth’s scar. But now an awkward shyness had crept into their friendship. She missed the old Corinne, her vivacity, her mischief.

‘What should I wear?’ Beth asked, the wardrobe open beside her, and her own heart open with hope.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you’ve to pick for me, remember? It’s part of the game.’

Corinne winced, and when she looked up, the expression on her face was one Beth didn’t recognize: scornful, cold.

‘It was a stupid game for children,’ Corinne told her, on her feet now and moving towards the door. ‘Make your own decisions, Beth. Grow up.’

The car park outside the tennis club was full, both flanks of the road leading to the club already occupied with SUVs pulled up to the kerb. Mark dropped Abi and the girls close to the entrance then drove off to find parking in one of the peripheral streets. Once inside, Eva disappeared to the changing rooms, while Abi led the girls into the bar.

‘Here,’ she said, handing Beth a twenty-euro note. ‘Get yourselves something.’

Then, seeing Irene Ferguson waving to her across the room, she began weaving her way through the scattered tables, leaving Beth and Corinne alone.

‘Do you want a Coke or something?’ Beth asked.

‘Sure,’ Corinne replied, but her eyes were casting around behind her, as if seeking a way out.

They queued for the bar in silence, Beth wondering what it was she had done wrong. She tried to tell herself that it was Corinne’s grief for her father that was making her by turns irritable and subdued. But her thoughts kept returning to that evening in France – Bruno, the squalid house full of dogs. She recalled the brief inflation of fury in Corinne’s eyes when Beth had chickened out of going through with the payment, and then the way she had refused to look at Beth when she emerged from the bedroom, the transaction completed. Beth understood that she had broken the rules of their game, and ever since that moment, she had felt the wintery coldness of Corinne’s withdrawal, the panicky fear it stoked alive inside her.