It had been nothing. Just someone heading home from work, from the pub, from dinner out. But it had felt so real and for some reason it made it so much harder not to think about Tom. I’d walked straight home afterwards, too fast, too terrified. It had been nothing but it had shifted something inside me and I couldn’t shift it back.

‘When did this happen?’ she asked. ‘Is that—’

The door pushed open and Nic came in. ‘Well, that was a shitshow.’

I gave Holly a warning look, and she pressed her lips together with a smile.

‘I know,’ I said, opening my tobacco and touching a filter to my lip. ‘Sorry about the wine.’

‘What wine?’

‘The riesling?’ I touched the filter again. It had been early in the night, before it got busy, and I’d misread a docket, sent a bottle of our most expensive riesling out to a table instead of a glass of the cheaper one.

‘Oh.’ Nic shrugged. ‘It’s fine.’

He’d said that when it happened, too, but it hadn’t felt fine. I pulled out a paper and filled it with tobacco. It had put a knot in my stomach that stayed there the rest of the night, slowed me down as I read every docket twice, made it hard to find a rhythm.

‘It was a hundred-and-fifty-dollar bottle, Nic,’ I said, taking the filter off my lip and sliding it into the end of the rollie.

‘Ha!’ He got a cigarette out of his locker. ‘Not to us.’

‘Still.’ It had been a stupid mistake, and I didn’t make stupid mistakes. But this past week, I’d made a few. Most of them so small Nic didn’t even notice, but I did. The dockets were harder to read. I put the rollie between my lips, wondered absently if I needed glasses.

Holly nudged my calf with her foot. ‘What do you think, Cait. Casino?’

I looked at my phone. Nothing. No messages. No calls. I didn’t expect any, but it still bothered me, bothered me more, had been bothering me all night and all day.

One thing.

‘Cait?’

I took a breath. Not ready.

‘She’s coming,’ Nic said, pulling his shirt up over his head. ‘She always comes.’

Holly snickered.

I frowned, ignoring them. It didn’t take much effort. My mind was somewhere else, the same place it had been for the past week.

One thing.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, unlocking my phone and opening the message screen. My fingers shook as I tapped on the screen, jumbles of letters my phone had to sort into words, and even then I wasn’t sure they made sense. ‘Maybe later. There’s something I need to do first.’ I hoped my voice didn’t sound as strange as I felt.