She wished this could have happened without Max, that much was true. But, she reasoned, Rav had had a shit deal with his company for years, and while neither of them had ever said it out loud they both knew it had more than a little to do with the fact that he wasn’t white. The big bosses who ran the place still talked a little more slowly when they took meetings with Rav, or mentioned that they’d had a lovely curry recently. Meanwhile, his contemporaries were starting to move past him. Asked to lunches he wasn’t invited to, or ‘impromptu’ meetings. So, while the idea of Max helping Rav made her toes curl, the idea of trying to take this away from him, or ruin the happy glow seeping off him, felt just too wrong. So, she listened and made all the right noises. And every time he said something like ‘I know you don’t really like Max, but he’s really helping us out. He’s doing us a favour. He’s really sorting us out,’ Chloe smiled and didn’t say what was really on her mind. There would, of course, be a reason Max was doing this. There would be something in it for him. Max had never done anything unselfish in his entire life, at least not as far as Chloe could see, and it seemed unlikely that he was about to start now.

The following week passed, Rav fizzing with excitement about everything he was going to achieve when he was in Australia, Chloe quietly anticipating having ten days of the house entirely to herself. The smallness of the flat was becoming increasingly difficult to cope with. A couple of glasses or plates left lying around and one wet towel on the floor and the entire place looked like a tip. The school holidays were always difficult, she reminded herself. She and Rav got out of sync; he left for work while she was still asleep and wanted to go to bed before she was tired. She was left without much to tell him, no anecdotes from a day of work, which meant she ended up listening far more than she talked. It was hard not to spend money every day if you went out, which inevitably meant she stayed at home. Occasionally, she would go over the road to see Lissy, but Lissy’s single focus was Claudia, who was cute, but still a baby and therefore a limited source of entertainment.