“I’m glad you came,” she said. “I wanted to ask about your friend’s mother. Have you found out what’s going on?”

“Oh, there’s nothing ‘going on.’ Cory told me—”

“Cory?”

“My friend.” I decided to stick to friend, even if it was rather demure. Fiancé didn’t come naturally yet. “Mrs. Byrne’s son.”

“Oh.”

“He just said she’s in a hospice—or something a bit like a hospice—and she’s not ready for visitors.”

“But surely he visits?”

“I suppose . . . I don’t know . . .”

“But he must do. Where is it, this place that’s ‘a bit like a hospice’?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “Look, Cory doesn’t want to talk about it, and I don’t like to press him . . . Quite honestly, it’s none of my business.”

Dad loathed it when I used the phrases quite honestly or to be honest with you; he said my honesty ought to go without saying. I took a sip and tried not to wonder what Maggie was thinking.

When I passed her the cup she grasped it in both hands, as if she’d get more heat out if she squeezed hard. A breeze passed over the surface of the sea, sending ruffles in odd directions, and we both shivered.

“You ought to ask him,” said Maggie definitely. “You ought to know what’s going on.”

I picked at the limpets that freckled our rock.

“It isn’t the kind of thing that needs to be secret,” she insisted. “If you’re too scared to ask him a simple question, he can’t be much of a friend.”

“I’m not scared of asking,” I said with a noise that resembled a laugh. “It’s not like that.”

“OK . . .” She sounded sceptical, as she balanced the cup between her knees and slid a hair bobble off her wrist. I could tell she was watching me from the corner of her eye.

My mouth—not my eyes—formed a dull smile as Maggie gathered her damp hair into a bunch at the back of her head.

“You remind me of my sister,” I said. “So full of your own . . .”

I petered out. Why did I always do this? Why did I always add Stella to the mix? I’d been irritated with Maggie in a perfectly straightforward way, but now I’d gone and complicated things.

“Is that so?” said Maggie. “Well, what does she have to say about all this?”

All this. There wasn’t an “all this.” There wasn’t an “all” anything. God, I wish I’d never got on that hospital bus. I took the coffee back and sipped without tasting.

“My sister? She doesn’t have anything to say about anything. She’s dead.”

Maggie froze with her hands behind her head, her fingers midtwist inside the bobble.

“Oh no . . .”

I kicked my heels against the rock and looked away, but in the end I told her.