She might have called Lisa first, but what little communication they’d had of late seemed so finely balanced, easily veering off the rails of friendly exchanges into perceived insults, judgement, blame, that it seemed better to talk to her in person. Besides, with all the emotion roiling around inside her brain, a large part of Beth wanted to be outside in the rain, feeling it permeating her clothes. The drama of turning up on Lisa’s doorstep wet through and desperate for refuge, for care, appealed to her. The Fergusons’ house had always felt safe to her, overheated, like a warm nest. All the lights were on downstairs, sending out their rosy glow into the night.

Beth expected Lisa to answer, or Mrs Ferguson with her silk eyelashes and tight mohair sweaters, her bright look of enquiry. But after a moment’s wait, the door pulled back and Callum Ferguson looked down at her, blinking, a sleepy, puzzled look on his face like he’d just been hauled out of bed.

‘Is Lisa home?’ she asked.

‘No.’

He was wearing flannel shorts and there was a red mark on his T-shirt that looked like ketchup. He rubbed his eyes and then regarded her briefly from where he stood inside the threshold.

‘You’re soaked,’ he observed, and Beth felt a creeping embarrassment, hair pasted to her forehead.

‘You’d better come in,’ he stated, turning away from the door before she could reply, leaving it wide open while he disappeared down the hall, so she had no choice but to follow him.

She closed the door behind her, felt the familiar fug of warmth as she stepped into the house, the soft weave of scatter rugs in the hall, the sweet, heavy scent of coconut from the plug-in fresheners Irene Ferguson had dotted around the house. The door to the playroom was open and Beth followed Callum inside. They still called it a playroom even though it had been years since the room had been home to Callum’s Scalectrix track ringing around Lisa’s stable full of My Little Pony toys. All of that had been cleared out long ago, replaced with a TV, a stereo, a DVD player and a Wii. There was a slouchy red corduroy couch on to which Callum had thrown himself, his eyes returning to the screen where there was a match playing – American football.

Beth hovered by the door, unsure of whether she should enter. She saw now that the mark on his T-shirt was not ketchup but sauce from the pizza he’d been eating, the remains of which still adhered to the Domino’s box on the low table. A six-pack of Hop House 13 sat alongside it, a couple of cans already squashed, lying on the floor.

‘Where is everyone?’ she asked.