Liv liked the way that sounded. She was too embarrassed to tell Essie that she’d always wanted to write and had a couple of partially finished novels in her bedside cabinet at home that she’d never shown to anyone. Or how she’d secretly taken a creative writing course but had dropped out after a fellow student tore her story to shreds in front of the whole class. The instructor had said she was talented and should stay, but the uninvited criticism ripped Liv’s confidence apart.

She wanted Essie to know that cleaning didn’t make her leap out of bed in the morning with glee. She had left school when she was sixteen, not because she wasn’t motivated, or unintelligent, but because she needed to help out her mum both financially and around the house. Furthering her studies hadn’t been an option.

At the same age Essie was popping champagne corks for her debut book deal, Liv was walking down the aisle in a secondhand wedding dress. Mack arrived when she was twenty-two, still young enough to attract disapproving stares on the maternity ward.

As a girl, cleaning was something Liv used to do with her mum. They sang together as they squeezed grapefruits and mixed the juice with salt. Domestic work was the obvious option when Liv needed work. Being able to spot fluff behind a radiator, a dropped piece of Lego, a lost earring or stray biscuit crumbs—in the same way a shark might detect fresh blood—was an art form Liv had mastered.

She didn’t say any of this to Essie. “I’ve always loved reading,” Liv said instead. “When I was seven or eight years old, I remember going to the local park. All the other kids were playing on the slide and the swings. They were laughing and having fun and I stood alone, wondering where the word roundabout came from. I thought I must be a bit weird.”

Essie dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “I can relate to that.”

“You can?” Liv said, delighted.

“I always knew I wanted to write, just as some people know they want to be nurses or police officers,” Essie said. “You need formal training for those vocations, but with writing you need an idea for a story and the resolve to get on with it. Books don’t write themselves.”

Liv’s neck pinkened at her own incomplete work. “I used to read under the covers using a torch at night, and I studied the acknowledgments in each book, to see who the writer had thanked. All those names of agents and publishers seemed like a secret society I wanted to sneak into.”

“I suppose I just see it as work.” Essie gazed above Liv’s head for a while, her chin tilted as if deciding on something. “Perhaps you could take on some extra tasks for me,” she said.

“Yes,” Liv said immediately.