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Essie’s little train draws in, disgorging the last few remaining passengers, stretching their legs after the long journey. The wind is blowing down from the north – Arctic air, even in the springtime, and the daffodils that are blooming in the city would be nowhere to be seen up here just yet. Essie always complains about the cold, but it is dry and fresh and the sky is a clear blue,and the route home goes up and down over cliffs and past bays, each bluer than the last, and it is always lovely.

Essie is, to Janey’s surprise, practically the last off. She’s usually in such a rush. But she is yawning and stretching her arms, and hauling two vast suitcases of stuff that Janey cannot even imagine where they’re going to store but she puts that thought to the back of her mind. They can stay in the car if they must.

She opens her arms wide and Essie, to her surprise, doesn’t give her a pat or a kiss on the cheek. She gives her a great big hug back, even letting her head rest on her mother’s shoulders as Janey pats her.

‘There, there,’ Janey finds herself saying, as if Essie is five and had skinned her knee.

Essie straightens up immediately.

‘I’m fine,’ she says, as if she’s been caught out in something.

Together they haul the bags to the tiny Kia, which groans rather sadly under the strain, then beeps repeatedly because it thinks a person has climbed into the back seat, so Janey discards the car wardrobe idea and attempts to talk about anything other than the obvious: that Essie must have indeed lost her job and, from the looks of the suitcases, her flat as well.

Janey can’t stop talking to her about dinner. She can hear herself doing it and wishes she could just shut up. But Essie looks sleepy and uncommunicative, so she finally lets the conversation peter out. As they drive, finally, into Carso, night falling, they pass the local pub, which has been repainted pale blue.

‘That’s weird,’ says Essie.

‘Oh, yes!’ says Janey, seizing on safe ground. ‘Shelby McFlynn took it over. Trying to make it some big Instagrammable thing.’

‘Shelby McFlynn?’ says Essie. It is ridiculous; she is a grown-up. Why does even just hearing the name make it all come flooding back? Shelby McFlynn, prettiest of all the girlsin her year. Who had sneered when Essie had been caught crying in the toilets the day after a particularly bad fight at home. Who had pretended to make an apology when the teachers were called, and had pulled it off because she had blonde hair and big brown eyes and the teachers thought she could do no wrong. It makes her shudder even now.

She sticks out her lip.

‘Is she really ugly now?’ she asks, hopefully. ‘Like, it all just went downhill and the suntans leathered up her skin and stuff. Or did she have some plastic surgery and it went terribly wrong?’

‘Oh, no,’ says Janey blithely. ‘Oh, no, she’s lovely-looking, is Shelby.’

‘Mum!’

‘What?’ Janey is confused. ‘I thought you two were friends.’

‘She was atotal cow.’

‘Oh, no!’

‘She was so obviously a total cow to me!’

Janey had always prided herself on being able to keep up with the serpentine twists of Essie’s school friendship groups, but that had fallen away as Essie had got more monosyllabic.

‘Okay,’ she says, as they turn away from the harbour and go up the lane. ‘I’ll hate her now too.’

‘Thank you,’ says Essie.

‘That’s a shame, though,’ says Janey, ‘because they actually do a really nice set lunch. And they have a great knitting group. And it’s kind of our Friday night—’

‘MUU-UM!’

‘No, you’re right.’

‘Can’t you go to the Cedars?’

‘It shut. Couldn’t get staff.’

‘Huh. What about the Red Lion?’

‘Nope. No staff either. Couldn’t get a chef to stay.’

‘Why not?’