“Okay. Thanks, that would be nice.” Lulu sat down again, exchanging a shrug with Charlie.

Gawkily graceful in a faded blue T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, Sophie loped to the cupboard and extracted the tightly sealed bag of meticulously blended coffee beans that Lulu traveled to Covent Garden once a week to mix for herself from the Monmouth Coffee Company. She took the bag across the room to the coffee grinder, her head bent, her hair shining gold as a halo against the snowy apple blossom in the window. She filled the grinder to the brim, closed the lid, and pressed a button.

There was a whirring sound, followed by a click, followed by silence.

Charlie closed her eyes.

“Sorry,” said Sophie. “I didn’t know it was going to do that. Sorry.”

Lulu got up, went to the coffee grinder, and inspected it.

“I can probably fix it,” she said at last. “It’ll probably take me all morning, and it might not look as pretty afterwards. But I can probably fix it.”

“Sorry,” said Sophie.

“I don’t mind how it looks,” said Charlie. “But promise me I’ll have coffee tomorrow morning.”

“You’ll have coffee tomorrow morning,” said Lulu. “I promise.”

“I really like coffee in the morning,” said Charlie. “I feel I can face anything after I’ve had coffee in the morning. It’s very important to me to have coffee in the morning. I don’t mind how the grinder looks after you’ve fixed it or if you have to do something strange with it from now on to make it grind the beans. I don’t mind if you go out and buy a cheaper grinder, or even if you go out and buy some coffee already ground—”

“Shhhhh!” Sophie leaped to cover her sister’s ears. “Don’t talk like that to her, she’s very sensitive about coffee. It’s all right, Lulu, she didn’t mean it.”

“You don’t get to make jokes right now,” said Lulu.

“Sorry,” said Sophie.

“You’ll have coffee tomorrow, Charlie,” said Lulu. “I guarantee it. And as for you, Sophie, I don’t know how you can make this up to Charlie, that’s between you and her, but as far as how you can make it up to me, you can do all the supermarket shopping from now on. I’ll buy the interesting things, like cheese and vegetables, but you can make sure we’re stocked up with the dull stuff like tea bags and dishwashing detergent, okay?”

“Okay,” said Sophie.

“And you don’t just buy it and leave it in bags on the table, either,” said Lulu. “After you’ve brought it home, you unpack it and put it away, okay?”

“Okay,” said Sophie.

“And this morning, while I’m hard at work fixing the grinder, you can make yourself useful by doing the laundry. You can wash everything, whites and coloreds, two separate loads, remember, and then you can put it all into the dryer, and then you can take it all out and fold it and put it all away, too.”