Boats moored near the yacht club clinked in a gentle sway, and the water lay green and still, the horseshoe arms of the twin piers hugging it close to the land.

Beth took the photo, but when Corinne examined it, her mouth twisted into a moue of dissatisfaction.

‘No. You are in it,’ she remarked tersely. And it was true that if you looked closely enough, there she was – a tiny Beth reflected in the dark lenses of Corinne’s heart-shaped shades.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

But Corinne just twitched her head to shake out her hair, held the ice-creams a little higher and said: ‘Take it again.’

Beth was getting better at taking the shots, more mindful now of keeping her own shadow out of the frame. The ice-creams were melting but Beth knew not to mention it.

Corinne licked the little tributary of strawberry ice-cream that was running down her arm, and handed the other cone to Beth. It was pistachio – a flavour she didn’t like, but so what?

She was getting used to Corinne making choices for her.

‘You need to try new things,’ Corinne was always telling her. ‘Be brave, not boring.’

It had started as a game, but now it was something that she just accepted: that Corinne laid out her clothes for her every morning, that she instructed her on what to order in restaurants and cafés, that she told her what messages to post on Facebook and Instagram. Bit by bit her reluctance had fallen away to the point that she now welcomed the instruction. Besides, Corinne only wanted what was best for her.

‘You have ice-cream on your face,’ Corinne said, reaching forward and sliding her finger upwards over Beth’s chin.

‘I’m such a slob,’ Beth admitted, embarrassed by her own happiness, basking in the radiant glow of Corinne’s attention.

There was an easy familiarity between them now, like friends who’d known each other all their lives. When they sat on the sofa in the evenings, watching Stranger Things, their legs slung over each other’s on the ottoman, Corinne idly curled strands of Beth’s hair around her finger. Only that morning, she had popped a zit on Beth’s face with a needle Beth kept for that purpose on the mantelpiece in her bedroom, Corinne’s gaze cool and detached like a surgeon, but she was careful with the needle, afterwards dabbing the weeping pinhole tenderly with a cotton pad. Beth thrilled to her touch.

They followed the crowd moving towards the People’s Park, pausing so Corinne could tip her ice-cream cone into a bin.

‘Didn’t you like it?’ Beth asked. They had queued outside Scrum-Diddly’s for fifteen minutes at Corinne’s insistence.

‘It was too sweet. It made me feel sick.’

She often did this, Beth noticed. Made a big fuss about ordering food and then, when it came, she lost interest.