Maureen shakes some Frosties into Chloe’s bowl, as she looks out of the window. Bright sunlight fills the kitchen.

Chloe nods as Maureen hands her Angie’s spoon.

Chloe eats slowly, the cereal sticking in her throat. She’s thinking of Patrick’s gun. Is that what business he has in town today? Is that why he hasn’t told Maureen? She’s picturing it lying in the back of the car later as they drive along isolated roads in the dark, back towards Low Drove. Not a soul around.

Chloe swallows her cereal too quickly. She coughs.

‘I was going to meet a friend later,’ she says, trying to clear her throat.

Both Maureen and Patrick look up.

‘A friend?’ Maureen says. She looks at Patrick quickly. ‘What friend, Chloe, love? We didn’t know Chloe had a friend, did we, Pat?’

Patrick shakes his head and leans forward on the table.

‘Hollie,’ Chloe says.

‘Hollie?’

‘Yes, Hollie.’

Maureen sits down slowly in the chair. She picks up a tea towel on the table and starts winding it around her hand.

‘You haven’t mentioned Hollie before, has she, Pat?’

Patrick shakes his head. Chloe looks between them, wondering why Maureen had found it necessary to check with him.

‘I’ve known Hollie my whole life,’ Chloe says.

Maureen lets out a little laugh. ‘Well, you can’t have known her your whole life . . .’ she says. ‘We’ve never heard of a Hollie, have we, Pat?’

Again, he shakes his head.

‘Can’t say we have,’ he says.

‘Oh . . . no, well, maybe not my whole life,’ Chloe says, suddenly backtracking. ‘But since, well, we were in foster care together.’

Maureen’s shoulders sink.

‘Oh,’ she says. Then again, ‘Oh. She doesn’t have parents either then?’

Chloe sees how she glances at Patrick. She quickly looks down into her cereal bowl.

‘Well, she does but . . . well, they couldn’t look after her, or at least they did but not how social services thought they should so . . . yeah. But she got a new family, Dave and Rita. They’re nice. And then yeah, we stayed friends afterwards. We’ve always looked out for each other, I guess. We tell each other everything.’

She looks at Patrick when she says that last bit.

‘Hmm,’ Maureen says, and looks down at the tea towel in her lap. ‘You should bring her here.’

‘What?’

‘Hollie. Is that what you said her name was? Shouldn’t she, Pat? Wouldn’t it be nice to meet Chloe’s friend?’

Patrick pauses.

‘Well, Mo, I . . .’

‘Whyever not, Patrick?’

‘Well, it’s not that I . . .’ he starts.

Chloe sees how he squirms in his seat.

Patrick stands up, goes to the sink. He taps the side of the worktop with his signet ring as he searches the big Fen sky for something.

Maureen turns to Chloe.

‘So you’ll bring her tonight?’

‘Sorry?’ Chloe says.

‘Hollie. You’ll bring her home, here?’