Her limbs felt heavy and lethargic as she headed back indoors, past Clive who had positioned himself right in the doorway. She had to climb over him to get inside, but he remained where he was, fast asleep, oblivious. She had a thought then, fleeting and thin, of Clive and her a few years from now, just the two of them in their little house by the sea, everyone else gone, and it made her feel wistful.

*

Mills could see her mother in the garden, the way she sat heavily on the bench, clutching at her cardigan like it was a straitjacket. The way her eyes flitted around anxiously as she checked her watch, always conscious that there was something she should be doing rather than just sitting in the garden enjoying a cup of tea.

Sometimes Mills wanted to tell her to chill, take a moment for herself. The only time she did indulge herself was when she was swimming. Even the writing seemed to be a chore these days, something to distract her and agonise over rather than enjoy like in the early days when she would call Mills over and excitedly open the box of freshly published paperbacks, take one out, proud and thrilled, showing it to Mills with a big smile on her face.

These days she just seemed sad.

Mills knew there were things going on she didn’t understand. Like her mother’s relationship with Hugh. She did not get what her mother saw in him. He was everything she was not and she waited on him hand and foot. He was stuffy, dull, old-fashioned and set in his ways. He liked to speak in clichés and she imagined that was what her grandfather must’ve been like. Not that her mother ever said much about him.

Mills often did stuff just to get a rise out of Hugh, but all he would do was tut and hand it over to her mother to deal with – and then Mills felt bad because her mother and her were a team, a unit.

Well, they used to be.

A thump through the bedroom wall and loud music started up. Matt had brought Diana home for the first time and Mills didn’t like it one bit.

Mills knew her from school last year. She was weird – too inquisitive, like she wanted to know everything about you. She had a way of staring at you when she talked, like she was evaluating your response or judging you, staring into your very soul to establish if you were telling the truth. Considering that Mills was a school year below her, it had seemed unnatural for her to take so much interest in Mills’ life.

And yet here she was in her house, having apparently moved on to Matt as her point of interest.

Mills necked more of the vodka, her brain in overdrive. It tasted funny, thin, but she drank deeply again anyway.