“Good to have a change,” Julie said. This made Emma feel like a breathing cliché, when in fact the restyle hadn’t really signaled a fresh start. She’d asked for a fringe that shadowed her eyes and heavy layers around her cheeks and jaw, as though to hide as much of her face as possible.

Emma knew her mum wanted her to open up more. But she was afraid of what might pour out if she allowed herself to begin. Her tactic was to offer something early on in the conversation: something her mum could help with but that Emma could stand to talk about.

“D’you think you could store some stock for me?”

“’Course, darling. Have you been clearing out the shop?”

Emma nodded. “We’re exchanging contracts on Friday.”

Julie’s head-tilt returned. Emma knew her well enough to guess she was deciding not to comment that things would have been much easier if Emma had leased a shop rather than bought one. Something she was only too aware of.

“And have you heard from Zeb?” her mum asked.

Emma still got that feeling whenever she spoke about him. Like a trapdoor had opened beneath her feet. “Not for a while.”

“You’re not still doing weird things, are you?”

“I haven’t done any weird things!”

“You almost suffocated yourself spraying aftershave around your place.”

“I just like the smell.” Emma’s own scowl drew her eye, trapped in the mini camera-image in the corner of the screen.

“It’s got to be dangerous in those amounts.”

“All right, Mum!” Emma resorted to a diversion tactic. She picked up her laptop and spun it outward, moving to the cupboard to show Gilbert camped between a box of kimonos and a bucket of vintage walking sticks. She froze as a shout reverberated from above: “Stop pushing me on this, Steph!”

“What was that?” her mum asked.

“The neighbors . . . their daughter . . .” But her screen was buffering, chewing up her words.

“Sounds like they’re having a barney,” Julie was saying, oblivious, as the connection resumed. “Remember those neighbors we had in Clapham? Always screaming at each other. And didn’t they keep some kind of iguana as a pet?”

“It was a snake . . .” Emma couldn’t focus on her mum’s chatter now that a storm seemed to be brewing overhead. “Maybe I should call you back. I’m struggling to hear you.”

Julie needed to add the finishing touches to her Moroccan feast anyway, so she signed off in an unidentified language—had she restarted Mandarin lessons?—and the screen blanked.

The room darkened without the spill of blue light from the laptop. It was pin-drop silent until Steph soared into earshot: “Don’t you know how serious this is, Paul?”