Chloe drops her hair and it returns to her shoulders. She pulls the top over her head and throws it onto her bed, exchanging it for the same jumper she has had on all day. Then, slowly, she descends the stairs for dinner.

It’s quiet around the table. Patrick wipes bread around his plate and tells Maureen some story about his sick friend at the seed factory. Maureen asks more questions about the type of cancer he has and they count on their fingers how many friends they’ve known who’ve had the same.

Chloe eats slowly, like she always does, but this time the food on her fork gets tinier as she prepares every bite.

‘You do like it, don’t you, Chloe?’ Maureen asks.

She nods, perhaps too enthusiastically, and Maureen’s attention falls back to her own dinner.

She eats slowly, watching them. Had she imagined now that flicker of disappointment on Maureen’s face when she came down for dinner wearing her jumper rather than her new blouse? Had she even remembered she’d asked Chloe to wear it tonight? She is waiting for Maureen to ask her about it, but the truth is, Chloe hasn’t prepared an answer. Something like betrayal is beating in her blood, though she doesn’t know why.

‘And what did you do today, Chloe?’ Patrick asks. ‘Did you see any of your friends?’

Chloe looks to Maureen, who purses her lips as she chews, as if to remind her not to say anything about the spare room.

‘I . . . er, no, just a quiet day, you know, tired from work.’

‘And what is it you do again?’ he says. He’s finished his meal, his knife and fork in a neat line on his plate, but he makes no move to leave the table. In fact, he pushes his chair back towards the wall and crosses his legs, trailing his hands in his lap.

Chloe looks to Maureen again, but this time she seems more relaxed, her expression encouraging this sudden interest in her.

‘Insurance,’ Chloe says. Isn’t that what she told them when she arrived? She’s panicking now, she can feel it in every pore of her skin. Her hands are clammy. She pushes them under the table.

‘Oh aye, which firm?’

Chloe tells him, quickly remembering the name of Phil’s company.

‘Oh, I have a mate who works there,’ he says. ‘Know him from school. John Bennett? Do you know him?’

Chloe shakes her head. Beneath the table, she presses her thumbnail into her palm. She’s disappointed when she doesn’t feel pain.

‘No,’ she says, looking up to the ceiling. ‘I don’t.’

Patrick waits a moment, then gets up from the table. He puts his plate in the sink. Chloe flinches a little when the knife and fork clatter to the bottom of it. What is it about his sudden interest in her that is making her so nervous?