I take a sip of coffee and give the name some thought. When I look up, Catherine is staring into the middle distance, almost as if she’s gone into some kind of trance. Perhaps she’s getting fed up with all this baby talk, although it was her idea to get the books off the shelf in the first place.

“Catherine? Are you all right?”

She smiles, brightly, as if a switch has just flicked on in her brain and she’s back in the moment. “I was remembering how I helped my parents choose Alice’s name,” she says. “They were arguing about it, like they argued about everything in those days.” A shadow passes across her face. “And then I held up the book I was reading. It was Alice in Wonderland.”

A hard lump gathers at the back of my throat. I’d never heard Alice’s parents arguing, although of course, by the time the two of us became friends, it was eleven years after the scene Catherine has just described. Perhaps they’d sorted out their differences by then, or learned to live with them. Or perhaps there had been tension, and I’d put it down to Alice’s mum’s depression. I expect I was too wrapped up in my own little world to take much notice of other people’s parents.

Another memory surfaces. Alice’s mum had just been admitted to hospital and Alice was telling me how some of the patients had bandages on their arms and rocked backward and forward, how others wandered around talking to themselves and shouting things out. She said they kept the main doors of the unit locked and that it was scary. I’d wanted to go with her, to see for myself what it was like. But Catherine must have been eavesdropping, for suddenly she was in the room with us, her face pinched with anger. “No,” she’d said. “Only family are allowed to visit.”

A chill passes through me as I remember the venom in her voice. I look across the table at this new, gentler Catherine, thumbing through one of the books on her lap, and the chill recedes. It must have been a dreadful time for the Dawson family, and especially for Catherine. Having to put her own plans on hold to look after her little sister yet again. And there’s so much stigma attached to mental illness, even more so back then. She wouldn’t have wanted me seeing her mother in that place. No wonder she felt so bitter. She was just trying to protect her family. I’m sure I’d have been the same if it had been one of my parents.

“Freya is an interesting name,” she says, absentmindedly flicking through the pages.

I make a vague, noncommittal sort of noise in the back of my throat. Poppy is still my favorite.