Minnie got off the fifty-six bus halfway up the Essex Road, just outside Sainsbury’s. A few lost-looking souls were waiting outside for it to open. Plastic glasses littered the kerb by the pub opposite, and the rain had not yet washed away the fag ends and half-eaten takeaways that lay on the pavement by overflowing bins. It was still pouring with rain as she ran down the side street to her flat, her arms cradled over her head for protection. At her door she fumbled in her bag, looking for her keys – they weren’t there. She stood, soaking wet and shivering, then emptied the bag onto the doorstep, clinging to the hope they might be hiding among old receipts and loose make-up. Looking down at the sodden pile of handbag clutter, she closed her eyes and exhaled slowly; her keys were in her coat pocket, the coat she’d lost on the bus the night before. Of course they were. It was her birthday – nothing would go right today.

Minnie looked up at the window of her flat. She could see her cat’s little grey face pressed up against the window.

‘Oh Lucky – poor Lucky!’ she cried. ‘I need to feed you, darling.’

Minnie stuffed everything back into her bag and rang the buzzers for the other two flats in the building. Maybe someone would take pity on her. She could at least charge her phone, get dry and ring her landlord to let her in. Nobody answered.

*

‘You’re early,’ said Leila as she opened her front door to Minnie half an hour later. ‘I thought I was taking you out for lunch?’

Leila lived in Stoke Newington in northeast London, half an hour by bus from Minnie’s place. She lived with her boyfriend on the top floor of an ex-council building. Their block was an unremarkable concrete stack with graffiti all over the hallways, but inside the place felt light and homely. Leila stood in the doorway wearing a pink dressing gown covered in unicorns. ‘Do I make you unicorny?’ was written across the front in sparkling pink lettering. Leila’s rainbow-streaked hair was pulled to the top of her head in a messy topknot; the stripes of bold colour had grown out to reveal several inches of mousy-brown roots beneath. When describing Leila, Minnie often said she was a 1950s film star with crazy hair; she had a curvy figure and these deep, hooded eyes that somehow always seemed to look sultry. This morning’s dressing gown ensemble wasn’t necessarily highlighting her film-star qualities.

‘I lost my house keys and got trapped in a nightclub toilet all night,’ said Minnie, walking through the front door and waving Leila away as she tried to hug her. ‘Don’t, you’ll get soaked.’