‘Like I said,’ she blurts, looking up at Harry. ‘I told Kat about the whole mutton-birding debacle, hence her whole, “the Harry?” thing.’ She’s blathering. Why is she reminding him of Kat’s tone?

‘Don’t worry, Luce,’ he says. ‘I’m not getting ahead of myself.’

Kat raises her eyebrows at Lucy.

Lucy raises hers back.

Kat smirks. ‘What ended up happening to those mutton-birds, anyway?’ she asks.

‘Cop confiscated them and fined Flo,’ Lucy replies.

‘Fucking pigs, hey?’ Kat says, shaking her head in disgust, always ready with the anti-establishment sentiment.

Lucy nods. ‘And Mitch is a bit of a pig, hey Harry?’

‘Blood oath,’ Harry agrees.

‘So after all that I didn’t even get to try mutton-bird,’ Lucy continues. ‘But after the smell, I don’t know if I could have stomached them anyway. I feel so awful about the fact that we took their lives needlessly, though, you know? In a funny way, I feel more awful about them getting confiscated than I do about us getting caught, if that makes sense. Like, we didn’t kill them for anything in the end. It’s just such a waste and so unnecessarily destructive. You know, those birds are family units—they pair up for life and come back to the same burrow every year and if they fail to conceive or their chick dies, they …’ she pauses and notices the way they’re all watching her speak. ‘I’m babbling, aren’t I?’ She laughs.

‘Yeah,’ Kat says. ‘You are. But don’t leave us hanging. What happens if they fail to conceive or their chicks die?’

‘Well, the likelihood of, you know, bird divorce increases dramatically. So that’s what we’ve done,’ she adds, looking at Harry. ‘And for no reason in the end.’

He frowns. She’s pleased he frowns.

‘Bird divorce?’ Kat says. ‘Yeah right. So it’s not just humans who can’t keep their shit together when the going gets tough?’ She turns to Shani. ‘Speaking of, did you hear about …’

‘Oh my god, what Seth did?’ Shani interrupts.

‘What a cunt, hey?’ Kat says. ‘How could he do that to Mia?’

‘I know!’

As the two of them gossip about Seth the cunt and poor Mia, Harry turns to Lucy. ‘How you going, Luce?’ he murmurs, his voice cutting below the music.

‘Bit pissed,’ she confesses. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while.’ The last several times she’d dropped into Flo’s he hadn’t been there. He wasn’t there when they’d done the quince paste, wasn’t there on that awkward evening when Lucy found the fine on the bench and begged Flo to let her pay it.

‘Please, Flo. Really. Let me,’ she’d said, too many times. But Flo had refused her money.