‘Yes, I just learnt a few weeks ago to do your name,’ her mother says.

Cathy’s eyes fill with tears. So her mother saved her box of things in the afterworld. After Rosie. She only wrote Cathy’s name on it recently. Suddenly Maria’s refusal to let go of the business doesn’t seem like micro-management or a refusal to trust. It seems like love.

Cathy and Frannie take a lunch break outside the next day. They never usually take them together, but Evan is covering. One of the positives, Cathy supposes.

It’s finally bright and dry, a blustery kind of day that makes your cheeks sting from the combination of cold wind and the sun. Cathy can feel the beginning of autumn’s tendrils. Cold nights and apples falling from trees and sitting outside with Tom in knitted jumpers …

Evan is staring at her through the back window in the staff room as she gets up. He’s talking to Maria. ‘I’ll get us some coffees,’ Cathy says to Frannie, who nods.

Cathy dashes inside, through the back. Something has evidently just been said, because Evan and Maria stop talking as soon as she arrives. ‘What?’ she says. ‘I was getting a chair –’

‘Evan thinks he has become a partner?’ Maria says questioningly to Cathy. ‘Which sounds absurd to me?’

Cathy’s heart descends in a chute that seems to run from her throat to her feet. ‘What?’ she says, stalling for time.

Cathy’s eyes meet Evan’s. She is the David to his Goliath. She sends a signal to him with her expression. Her face feels stiff and dry. With emotion, with stress, with the constant rug-pulling of what they have done. ‘Does he?’ she says, staring at Evan, not knowing which way this is going to go, not knowing what his game plan is. What did he say to Maria? And why?

‘My mistake,’ Evan says. ‘I said I’m going for partnership. It’s my ambition,’ he says to Maria, still looking at Cathy.

‘Right,’ Maria says. ‘Well, it would be a big step for us to do that, you know,’ she says. She widens her eyes at Cathy.

Cathy swallows and looks at Evan as he leaves the staff room, whistling. And that’s when she realizes. Games are Evan’s plan. He knows she doesn’t know. He saw her coming in, and said something to Maria, designed to create exactly this effect. The actions of a man who has been powerless for years, and is now drunk on his fortunes. Cathy can’t say anything to him, can’t even look at him for fear the conversation will escalate, so she makes the drinks in silence and goes back outside.

‘Evan just told Mum he’s a partner and then retracted it,’ Cathy says to Frannie.

‘What? Why?’

‘Games, I think. It’s a threat, isn’t it?’ Cathy says.

‘But he’s got what he wants.’ Frannie’s voice is stern, but her hand is trembling as it worries at her lip.

‘He’s got the first thing he wants,’ Cathy says, thinking of what he said last night: Why wouldn’t you get the most out of a situation?