It was a thing of beauty, so different from the clothes Melissa had usually worn which were shapeless and utilitarian – mannish even. But the dressing-gown was her secret luxury, my little indulgence, Melissa used to say, a gift from a friend Beth had never met or known, brought back from overseas. How strong the memory was: the flash of silk over cotton pyjamas, the draped sleeves, the sleekness of the long-billed heron, his elongated neck. And when Beth slipped her arms into the sleeves and Corinne fixed it over her shoulders, she caught a sudden whiff of Pears soap, an undertone of something musky – the little rollies Melissa used to smoke. That smell, so familiar to her, it was as if her aunt had slipped into the room, was standing right behind her in the shadows. Turning to the window, she caught sight of her own reflection, and in that moment, she recognized the likeness: the dressing-gown, her own pale face in the glass – it was uncanny.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her breath coming quickly.

‘Hey, what is it? What’s wrong?’ Corinne asked, and Beth shook her head.

‘Nothing, I’m fine.’

But Corinne’s gaze was worried, and so Beth said it again: ‘Really, I’m fine.’ But her skin was clammy, a shakiness in her limbs like a sudden drop of sugar in her bloodstream. She closed her eyes, wished herself back in the brightly lit warmth of Eddie Rocket’s. In the lidded darkness, she felt Corinne take her hand, turning it over to reveal the soft inside of the wrist.

Beth felt the gentle drag of fingertips over her skin and began to feel calm. Corinne watched her carefully like a tentative nurse, and it was the tenderness of her gaze as much as her touch that quelled Beth’s anxiety.

‘I will miss you,’ Corinne said.

‘Me too.’

‘We are best friends now, yes?’

‘Yes. Oh, yes.’ Her heart filling up.

‘We should do something – something to seal our friendship.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know …’

Beth suggested cutting their palms and holding them together so their blood mingled, but Corinne was squeamish and recoiled at the idea. She had a better idea, something more intimate that required trust.

‘Tell me a secret,’ she said, her voice whispery. ‘The biggest secret you have. The one thing that you lie awake at night, thinking about. The thing you are afraid to tell anyone.’

The room around them felt cold. It was getting late and they’d have to cycle back in the dark with no lights.

‘I don’t know,’ Beth said. ‘I can’t think of anything.’

Looking down, she felt the silk beneath her hand, the feathery lightness of it.

‘I will go first,’ Corinne offered.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and Beth saw the curl of Corinne’s eyelashes as she looked up at her on the bed.