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asking, ‘Who did you play with at playlunch?’
    Kristi pulled a leaf from a shrub, crumpled and sniffed it, then passed it to Lauren. ‘Seriously,’ she said in a low voice, ‘have you been crying?’
    Lauren gave the leaf a token sniff then dropped it. ‘It’s just work.’ She couldn’t go into detail. The incident reminded her too much of Thomas’s assault.
    ‘Keeping emotion in is bad for your spleen,’ Kristi said.
    Lauren produced a smile. ‘My spleen’s tip-top.’
    If somebody had told her five years ago that Kristi would be like this now, she’d have booked them into the nuthouse. But maybe some alcoholic drug-users were like smokers – there were none so rabidly against their old lifestyle as the reformed.
    At their house Kristi unlocked the door and Max and Felise charged up the stairs. Max’s mum, Tamsyn, worked five days a week, and his dad, Ziyad, worked in an office on Mondays and from home the rest of the week, so that day Max spent the after-school hours at Lauren and Kristi’s. Lauren felt for him because he always wanted to run in their yard and swing from the tyre that hung in the ancient mulberry tree, but Felise and her will of steel forced him to play school in the big attic playroom first. From the living area on the first floor Lauren could hear her bossing Max around. ‘You sit there and be the teacher, and I’ll sit here and write in my book, then I give it to you and you mark it and give me a big gold star and tell me what a good girl I am.’
    Lauren pressed the button on the answering machine. ‘
Hi, I’m calling for Kristi Yates
,’ a man said. ‘
We’d like you to come round and give us a quote for a feature wall in our courtyard. Can you call me back on
–’
    ‘Delete it.’
    ‘It’s a job,’ Lauren said, trying to hear the rest of the message.
    ‘He didn’t even say please.’
    ‘He might have at the end. I’ll rewind it and see.’
    ‘He sounds like a wanker,’ Kristi said. ‘Just delete it.’
    Lauren ignored her, rewinding the tape and copying down the man’s contact information.
    ‘Told you he wouldn’t say it.’
    Lauren played the next three messages, all left by people with similar requests, and wrote down their details. Across the room Kristi scratched with scissors at the grout that had dried around her nails.
    ‘This is money,’ Lauren said.
    ‘We’re getting by.’
    ‘Only just.’
    ‘We’re happy,’ Kristi said. ‘That’s what matters.’
    The sound of running feet echoed down from the attic. Felise shouted, ‘No! You have to sit
there
!’
    ‘I have more than enough work to go on with anyway,’ Kristi said.
    Lauren rubbed her forehead. The headache was coming back. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’
    ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you.’ Kristi put down the scissors. ‘There’s no hot water.’
    ‘Why?’
    She shrugged. ‘I’m not a plumber.’
    ‘Did you call one?’
    ‘I only remembered just then.’
    Lauren stood very still.
    ‘You want me to call one now?’ Kristi said.
    ‘Might be an idea,’ Lauren said. ‘Don’t you think?’

     
    The water heater was dead and needed replacing but the plumber couldn’t do it that day, so in the evening Lauren and Kristi and Felise trooped gratefully into the Saleebas’ house. Back at home later, Felise declared her intention of having a bath with Max every day for the rest of her life.
    Lauren’s headache persisted despite aspirin, and when turning the lights out before bed she paused in the kitchen and took down the bottle of bourbon they kept for emergencies.
    ‘You going to tell me now?’ Kristi stood in pyjamas in the doorway.
    Kristi was a good listener and always made you feel better – made you feel so good, in fact, that once you started talking you didn’t want to stop. Lauren doubted her ability to control herself tonight. All evening her memories of the incident with the ice addict had blended in her head with those of Thomas in the alley. She’d tried to