It’s very clear that Kiera has been here a lot. The first thing she does in the kitchen is crank on the old oven and put the pies on a tray. She then pulls down a large yellow porcelain bowl from a very high shelf and dumps the butter-cheddar chips into it. From another high shelf in one of the few cabinets, she pulls out a copper wine chiller and puts in the bottle of Pét-Nat she brought from the shop. From the selection of mismatched, clearly thrifted or inherited dishes, she picks out a small sky-blue plate, and shatters a bar of sea salt caramel chocolate onto it.

All the while she sings along with the Kate Bush album she put on.

“I’m going to build a fire,” I say, not sure what else to do, and thinking it would be cute.

“Ooh, lovely,” she says. “The new you, I suppose.”

I have a pang of guilt and for a moment I can’t figure out why. Then I realize it’s because I’m secretly wishing that it were Aimee here. Not Kiera. Even though there’s nothing wrong with Kiera. She’s great, in fact.

It’s just that I’ve missed Aimee so, so much. Aimee and I could change in front of each other, pee in front of each other, rage in front of each other, be excited in front of each other. I went to her for advice and to vent and she came to me for the same thing. It was never one-sided.

Another memory flashes in my mind, long suppressed.

We were fifteen, and I had gotten dumped for the first time. The boy was named Dickie, which I was somehow able to take seriously. He had bright green eyes and straight, post-braces teeth. He played baseball and wore the black-and-blue Burchell Hawks gear 90 percent of the time. We had been official for two entire weeks, and then he’d broken up with me because another girl said yes to homecoming faster than I did.

I was obviously heartbroken, particularly because he had called my house phone and done the dumping in a matter of ten seconds. My parents were out at dinner with some friends, so I ran to Aimee’s house unannounced and rang the doorbell. Aimee answered and half an hour later we were in the backyard eating pizza ordered by her parents and drinking Sprite over lots of ice (she had a machine in her fridge, unlike us) from Tervis tumblers. I cried and cried, as I used to do so often, then she made me laugh, and I felt better.

It’s so strange to imagine crying in front of someone so easily now. Unless I’m filming, I never do. I get the urge often, but I never let it happen.

I take a match to the newspaper I’ve put under the careful pyramid of logs and watch it erupt in flames.