“Dinner?”

Lina nods again. The daube of beef, his favorite, will be ready in the fridge, beautifully cooked.

“You’re an angel. I literally cannot remember how we coped before you came.” She wants to hug Lina but doesn’t quite dare.

A red stain creeps into Lina’s cheeks. She sets out cereal and bowls on the island, adds cutlery and a little vase of flowers.

“Take the day off,” Melissa says impulsively. “Izzy will be out and I intend to work. Everything’s ready for Paul. You deserve a break.”

Lina has a boyfriend, a thickset, bearded man who looks older than her, a little surly. He waits outside the house in the evenings; perhaps they could spend the day together. Lina bows her head in acknowledgment. Melissa returns to the sitting room; Izzy is still glued to her laptop. “Here’s Venus come to see you. I’m going to catch up on work till it’s time to go.” She tumbles the kitten on to her daughter’s lap; Izzy’s hand closes around the soft little ears.

Grace

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Grace pushes against the glass; the jammed window gives way on the third attempt, her hand scraping on the frame. She jumps off the bathroom stool and holds the bleeding palm under cold water, which seeps up her arm, soaking the new white shirt, the neat black suit.

“Fuck.”

Receptionists should be immaculate, but there’s no time to change and nothing to change into. She trips over Martin’s shoes left in the doorway of the main room.

“Bloody hell.”

She pulls the curtains back; the sun floods into the room. The sky looks flawless, that deceptive English blue. You can see a long way from the thirteenth floor. Thirteen was unlucky, Martin had worried; beggars can’t be choosers, she’d shot back. Charley likes it. She watches foxes in the community gardens from here, sleek shapes slipping by the rows of beans in the dusk. Blake wants a garden but he’d need help and there wouldn’t be time; there’s ten minutes left some nights, half an hour if she’s lucky—just enough time to slip the red notebook from its hiding place on the top shelf under the pile of cookbooks she bought from Zimbabwe. She writes at night in secret, battling tiredness.

A muffled groan comes from the sofa. Martin is lying flat out with a cushion over his head. An ashtray brims beside him, three empty beer bottles on the table, papers on the floor. When she narrows her eyes, his outline becomes a sleeping animal, a beast from the plains, lifeless on the back of her grandfather’s truck, chugging into the village at sunup, blood dripping on the dust. Cocks crowing. Smoke from early fires. Miles and years away. Before success, before failure. Somewhere inside her husband is a young student with burning eyes, the English boy she’d followed over the sea. In the flat above a door slams as the tenants leave for work; that’s exactly how it began for them all those years ago, with the sound of a door slamming.