‘Chloe!’ said a slender woman. It took Chloe a moment to realize that it was Zadie’s mother. She was less made up than she had been the first time Chloe had met her, and her hair was pulled back. She looked years younger, and much softer. ‘I’m so glad you could come. Would you like some tea?’

On a table at the side of the room there was sort of afternoon tea set up, pretty pink-and-gold tea cups with saucers, several slightly wonky home-made-looking cakes and a variety of sandwiches curling at the edges. ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

Mrs Lister pulled her away to the tea table and started piling up a plate with things to eat. ‘I’m not just saying this, but you really must eat up now, we won’t have supper until ridiculously late because we’ve got thirty people coming and I’m very disorganized.’

‘Gosh, you’re doing all the cooking?’ Chloe hadn’t ever said ‘gosh’ before in her life.

Mrs Lister laughed. ‘It’s only beef bourguignon, nothing very exciting. I did most of it yesterday. The hardest bit has been keeping the dogs out of the larder. I’m terrified they’ll get in and eat all the cheese, then we’ll have a revolt on our hands.’ She pressed the plate and a tea cup into Chloe’s hands. ‘Have you got everything you need?’

‘Absolutely, yes,’ Chloe said. ‘I haven’t seen Zadie, though.’

‘Zadie is having one of her moods. You know how she gets.’

‘How she gets?’ Chloe realized too late that, as Zadie’s room-mate, she would have seen every single one of her moods for the last ten weeks, not just intermittent flashes of her. ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

‘But she does seem to be better since she’s been living with you,’ Mrs Lister added. ‘At least some of the time. She said you really cheered her up recently, after a fight with Max.’ The change in her tone when she spoke Max’s name was almost inaudible. But not quite.

‘She’s great to me, too,’ Chloe said. ‘It’s a two-way street.’

Somehow, Chloe had said the perfect thing. Mrs Lister smiled a huge, genuine smile. ‘I really am so glad that you came—’ It sounded as if she had been going to continue her sentence, but before she could there was a wail from the sofa as a child who looked about five – Chloe assumed it was Zadie’s youngest brother, William – slid on to the floor and banged his elbow. Mrs Lister was there in a moment. She looked down at her hands, one taken up with the plate of food and the other with a cup of Earl Grey. There wasn’t anywhere obvious to sit, certainly nowhere she would be able to balance the cup and the plate. Max was still standing by the window, looking out into the dark. She went over to join him.