Bridget slides her key as quietly as she can into the back-door lock. It’s late. Friday night, almost 1.30 a.m. Saturday morning then. A last glance across the backyard to the car park, to the black hulk of her van above the hedge. It’s always silent when she gets home from a gig, and she’s always done in. But she can never go to bed straight away. Too wired.

She eases the door open and lifts her guitar and amp inside. The kitchen is dark but for the night light her sister always leaves on for her. Bridget creeps across to the cupboard and pulls out the Glenmorangie – half a bottle left. She pours a small measure and steals back out onto the patio. She sits at the little metal garden table and rolls a special ciggie, lights it and gives a sigh like a smoke signal in the still of the night. She takes a swig of whisky, another drag, and feels the rush, the draining down of all that adrenalin.

The last plane has long gone over. No foxes screeching, no sirens, none of the muggy background noise that hums through the suburb’s daylight hours. This is as near to silence as they ever get around here, and that’s OK. By now, Rosie and Toni will have been asleep for hours. Early to bed, early to rise, that’s her former scallywag little sister these days. So much easier to keep an eye on – a piece of piss, frankly, compared to the nightmare she was in her late teens, early twenties. God, she was tough! Never kept up with the social worker, never went to school, and then the drugs, Christ, the drugs, the alcohol, the boys who should have known better down at Yates’s Wine Lodge, and later at Destiny’s nightclub slash knocking shop. The times Bridget had to drive her clapped-out rust-bucket Renault 5 all the way to Watford to carry a plastered Toni out of the club, throw her into the back seat and take her home – hold her forehead while she puked, put her into the recovery position. Plastic bowl, glass of water, paracetamol. Even now, when she’s had too much red, Toni still apologises for those times.

‘You could have finished uni if it weren’t for me,’ she says. ‘I ruined your life.’

What can Bridget say to that? Over the years she’s given every reply she can think of.

It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.

None of us really knew what we were doing, sis.

I could’ve finished uni if Uncle Eric had kept his cock in his trousers, you mean.

My life’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

It had to be me. Who else was it going to be?

Perhaps she should have said, ‘Yes, you did. You were a fucking nightmare.’

But that’s no truer than any of the others. And her sister is so strict with Rosie, sometimes Bridget throws it back at her. She can’t help herself.

‘Because of course you were tucked up in bed at nine every night at her age, weren’t you, Tones?’

Toni tells her to shut up. ‘It’s different, Bridge. She has me and you. She doesn’t have a mum who’s off with her new boyfriend. She has a family who actually keep an eye on her, who actually give a shit. I want something better for her than I had, that’s all. She won’t be giving blow jobs for drug money, not on my watch.’

‘I was only teasing.’ Bridget is quick to know when she’s gone too far. ‘I want something better for her too.’

And they’ve done it. They’ve made something better for the kid despite everything. They’ve done brilliantly under the circs. They’re not rich, they’re not setting any career highs or living an Instagram life, but they are safe – they love each other. They’re not totally unhappy.

‘Bridge?’ Toni. At the back door.

‘Christ, you gave me a shock! I thought you were asleep.’

‘Are you smoking weed?’

‘It’s flavoured tobacco. Herbal.’

Toni huffs and puffs in mock disapproval and comes out onto the patio. She has her nightie on, and her towelling robe, the sheepskin slippers that Bridget bought her for Christmas because she always has cold feet.

‘Herbal, my arse.’ Toni takes the joint from Bridget’s fingers.

‘Don’t let your daughter see you doing that.’

‘Have you got whisky too?’

‘Yep. There’s all sorts I get up to in the dead of night when you’re in bed.’ Bridget gets up, goes inside and brings another glass and the Glenmorangie from the kitchen.

Tones eyes the bottle with suspicion. ‘Just a nip.’

‘That’s all you’re getting, you cheeky sod. This is good stuff.’

Toni smiles and passes back the joint. ‘You OK? Looked like you were miles away.’

‘Yeah. Good gig actually. Good crowd.’ Bridget tops up her own glass, glad of her sister’s company. She’d have been falling into melancholy by now out here on her own. Fallin’ into maudlin, as Helen says. Ah, Helen.

‘Where was it?’

‘The Crown. You know, Marble Hill, near the park, that little roundabout? Do you need a blanket? I can run and get you one.’

‘No, it’s OK. I’m warm. Do you mean where we took Rosie for her birthday lunch that time?’

‘The very one. How far we’ve come from a bag of cheese and onion and a can of crap cola down the Hounslow Sports and Social, eh? Bag of dry roasted if you’re lucky, sit quietly and we might let you chalk the cue. How’s you anyway? Any curtain rings round willies to report?’

Toni sighs. ‘Rosie’s meeting Naomi for coffee again tomorrow.’

‘That’s OK, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. No. Yes. Just can’t understand why she would go when Naomi blew her out only last week.’

‘She’s fifteen, Tones. I think kids are just flakier these days, that’s all. If you can text someone, you can blow them out whenever you like, can’t you? Nothing personal, it’s just not like when we were kids, is it? Carrier pigeon would never have made it in time. And you can’t stop her going for coffee with a mate.’

‘I know.’ Toni sips her whisky and gasps. ‘Jeez, that’s strong! How do you drink it?’

‘Practice.’

Toni cradles the glass in her hands. The two of them stay a moment in silence, listening to nothing, looking at nothing.

‘It’s just…’ Toni says then.

‘What? Go on, you know you’re going to say it, so you may as well.’

‘You know last week she said she was going into Twickenham and then we bumped into her in Hampton Hill? Well, it’s just she could have texted to say she was changing cafés, couldn’t she? I don’t know. There’s something funny about it, don’t you think?’

‘No, I don’t. She’s a teenager. They’re shit-for-brains. It’s in the book.’

‘But why wouldn’t she text?’ Tones ploughs on. It’s better to let her. ‘Why, when they have these expensive phones, can’t they send a simple text? It’s almost as if she wanted to go somewhere in secret. Do you think she’s keeping secrets?’

‘I should hope so. She’s fifteen. Look at you, smoking joints like you’re Chrissie Hynde or someone in your own back garden. You’re not going to tell her that, are you?’

Toni tips back her head and exhales heavily, a plume of smoke rising into the dark blue night. She is amused – Bridget can tell by the set of her mouth, but she’s not letting on. ‘That’s completely different. I’m a grown-up.’

They drink in silence. One more toke each and the joint is dead. Bridget throws it onto the patio and crushes it under her boot.

‘I’ll pick that up, don’t worry,’ she says, and then, ‘Listen, it’s only a coffee. And it’s in broad daylight. So what if she is meeting a boy? So what if she’s not telling you? Is that really the end of the world? Don’t you remember all that, how exciting it was?’

‘It wasn’t really, not for me.’

‘No, I get that. But later, when you met Stan? You were like a kid then.’

Toni smiles, at last. ‘I was.’

‘You didn’t even tell me.’

‘Only for a week. And I was busy.’

‘Busy. That’s what you’re calling it, is it?’

On cue, in the darkness, the foxes are off, screeching their sex life like insensitive, rampant neighbours. Those poor females, Bridget thinks. But at least the sound is rural, somehow. And now the planes have stopped, they could be in the countryside. If the stars weren’t hidden by the orange glow of street lighting, if the 33 bus hadn’t just shuddered on by, if they couldn’t see the looming mass of suburban houses blacker than the black sky, yes, they could be in the countryside. Almost.

‘Do you think foxes have orgasms?’ she asks.

Toni laughs. ‘More than us, I bet.’

‘Everyone has more than us, Tones. If I don’t count the ones I have on my own.’

Toni laughs. ‘Thanks for that.’

‘You’re welcome.’

The screeching stops. Another bus out on the main road. Feeling her muscles stiffen, Bridget shifts in her seat. ‘We’ve come a long way, the three of us.’

‘We have. Rosie with her two mums.’

‘You’re her mum, Tones.’

‘You’re ours. You look after us both.’

‘Don’t think it’s as clear-cut as that.’ Bridget stands and stretches. When she rolls her arms, her back gives a crack. ‘We look after each other,’ she says. ‘And you, my love, need to go to bed.’