Kris shook his head with a weary, wry grin as he shook the pan again.

Bell gave her the bird, and a sarcastic smile. ‘It was some doctor asking for Hanna. She said it was urgent, and gave me a message – but it made no sense, right? Like, none at all.’

Tove nodded impatiently, whirling her hands in a ‘get on with it’ motion, puffing more smoke towards the ceiling pendant.

‘Only, I couldn’t get hold of Hanna all day – like I said, she had a client emergency of her own going on. I wasn’t that worried about it, because I really figured they must have had the wrong number, or the wrong Hanna, at least, because her message made no sense.’ She took a swig of her beer. ‘But then, when Hanna got back this evening . . .’

Kris, tossing the peppers to let them char on the other side, watched her, waiting. Unlike Tove – ever impatient and restless – he understood that she had to run it through in her mind again exactly as it had happened, in case there had been a mistake . . . She looked straight up at him. ‘It turns out that before she was with Max, Hanna was married to some other guy.’

Kris frowned. ‘Did we know that?’

‘Nope. He’s never been mentioned. There’s no photos of the dude anywhere.’

‘Oooh, a secret husband – how fabulous!’ Tove said, lifting one endless leg into the air. Bell always joked that her legs were like strings with knots in them, but they both knew she was just jealous. If Tove was lean and lanky – with a tendency towards elegance in her more mature moments – Bell was rounded and, in Tove’s words, ‘juicy’. Five foot four but with a figure like a cello, she had curves where Tove had straight lines.

‘Well, he was secret for a reason. Apparently the poor guy’s spent the past seven years in a coma.’

Kris stopped what he was doing. Tove’s leg swung down, and her arm dangled off the side of the sofa. ‘What?’ they asked in unison.

Bell nodded, feeling gratified by their shock. It roughly matched her own. ‘Yeah. And today he woke up.’

‘Holy shit!’ Kris returned the pan to the heat as though unable to keep holding it. He stared at her as though she had the answers. ‘How?’

‘What do you mean, how?’ Tove asked him, sitting up herself now, her short skirt riding all the way up her thighs to flash her knickers – no one in the room caring, least of all her. Bell was just grateful she was wearing some. ‘Her husband was asleep and now he’s awake! He opened his eyes and woke up!’

‘Well, if it was that simple, you’d have thought he’d have done it before now, surely?’ Kris exclaimed.

‘Hmm.’ Tove conceded the point.

‘I’m not really sure how they did it,’ Bell replied. ‘It was a lot of different things combined, I think. Hanna said something about stimulating the vagus nerve . . .? It’s some pioneering treatment. I don’t think they thought it would actually work.’