Entering the Green redbrick terraced house was like wandering into an arcade. Lights were on in every room, screens blaring and music blasting. Johnny was eighteen and attended a local sixth form college, and Mack was twenty and home from university for Easter. They were both six feet tall and bounded rather than walked, making vases wobble and floorboards groan. No matter how many times Liv and Jake tidied up after them, their bedrooms resembled the aftermath of a hurricane.

After the stress of her conversation with Essie, Liv craved normality and a laugh over the lasagna Jake had said he’d make. She hoped Johnny’s new girlfriend being present would stave off the constant talk about football around the dinner table.

She called out a quick, “Hi, I’m back,” before kicking off her shoes and placing the cake on the radiator shelf. “Bentley and White?” she muttered to herself and laughed. “As if.”

Upstairs, she slipped into a shapeless black dress she’d had for years and kept on her socks. She bought them in shades of pink so they didn’t get mixed up with the boys’ pairs.

She cleaned her teeth and gave her hair a quick ruffle in the bathroom mirror. She’d recently cut it herself to save on salon costs and had taken a slice out of her right eyebrow. Johnny had laughed and called her edgy. Her butterscotch layers were now shaggily uneven, though her contrasting dark roots made her sage eyes appear greener.

Back downstairs, Liv found Johnny slumped at the dining table flicking through one of his dad’s film magazines so roughly he almost ripped Keanu Reeves’s face. When she squeezed his shoulder to say hi, he grunted without looking up.

Jake stood behind the kitchen island, wearing Liv’s pink apron with Keep It Clean printed on the front. The sight of his biceps flexing while he buttered bread could still make her belly flip, though the tawny curly hair she’d fallen in love with over twenty years ago was now cropped and graying. She tried to plant a kiss on his cheek, but they clumsily butted foreheads when he turned to greet her.

“You’re here,” he said with mock surprise. “I thought you’d been kidnapped.”

Liv broke off a piece of bread and popped it in her mouth. “Essie wanted to chat to me about a book review.”

“Hmm,” Jake said flatly. He wasn’t impressed by the kind of books Essie wrote. His family’s business, Paperpress, specialized in bookbinding, typesetting and printing textbooks with a particular focus on sports, politics and local history. He preferred to read biographies and journalistic nonfiction over novels. He called Essie’s novels made-up stories.

That’s what fiction is, Liv always wanted to retort, though never said anything back.