It’s 11.30 a.m. when Toni comes out of the shower. Bridget hopes the warm water has relaxed her, returned her to herself. Standing there on the chair, soapy cloth in hand, she stops cleaning and listens. Hears her sister in the hallway – hears that she doesn’t go into her own room, which is next to the bathroom, but further on, to Rosie’s room. Bridget can hear this because the door hinges squeak. She has been meaning to fix this for weeks and makes a mental note to fetch the WD40 from the shed later and get it sorted today. There’s no reason for Toni to go into Rosie’s room, no laundry to deliver; the washing machine’s still churning the week’s dirt out of Rosie’s school uniform, and, at fifteen, she is expected to hoover her own room and keep it tidy. In theory.

But Bridget doesn’t wonder even for a moment why her sister has gone into Rosie’s room. She knows why.

Resisting the urge to call out, to save Toni from herself, Bridget carries on with her spring clean, singing one of The Promise’s songs to block out the noise of drawers opening and shutting, the sound of her niece’s privacy being invaded.

‘Bridge.’ Toni is at the kitchen door. She’s dressed, but her hair is wet, combed back from her face. She hasn’t put on any make-up yet and her face is still a little puffy. She looks exhausted. In her hands she holds a yellow iPhone 5C.

‘Is that Squirt’s phone?’ Funny how, in these moments, we ask questions we already know the answer to.

Toni nods. ‘She left it on charge. I know you’re going to say no, but I think we should check it.’

From the cupboard top, a thick clump of grey fluff, made entirely from dust, floats down to the floor. Bridget climbs down from the chair, crosses over to where Toni is sitting and takes the phone from her. ‘But I thought you checked it regularly?’

‘I do, but…’

‘You’re going to find something you don’t like,’ Bridget says quietly. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because that’s what happens when you snoop around in other people’s affairs, Tones. Come on. How would you feel if I checked through your phone? Or your diary?’

‘You could check through my phone any time. There’s nothing exciting on it anyway. Messages from you, mostly. I should imagine checking through my phone would be the most boring thing anyone could do, to be honest. Not like I have much of a life, is it? I haven’t even been to the pub since…’ She looks up, finally. Her eyes are shining, rimmed as if in red eye pencil. When she blinks, they overflow.

Bridget feels more sorry for her than she can put into words. Even if she knew how to phrase what she feels now, she would not say it. She wants to throw her arms around her sister’s neck and ask, How can I fix you? but right now, at this moment, it would be like trying to hold a bramble.

‘It’s not right, Tones,’ she says softly.

‘But she ran out before I…’ Toni sobs, looks desperately out of the kitchen window, as if by some miracle her daughter will come bounding across the patio, all smiles. ‘And I can’t text her because she doesn’t have her phone.’ She looks around the kitchen then, as if searching for something. ‘I think I’ll drive to the café. I won’t go in. I’ll just drive past slowly and see if I can spot her. Or I could go in and say, hey, you forgot your phone.’

‘Don’t do that.’

‘Or I could text Naomi, couldn’t I? Say, hey, I know you’re with Rosie so can you tell her she’s forgotten her phone? Her number will be in here. In fact, I’ve got Naomi’s number in my phone, I could call her from mine…’

Bridget feels a tightening around her heart. ‘Look, why don’t you and me go into Richmond instead? We can go for coffee in that new Danish place. Saph said the cakes in there are better than sex. We could have one each and see if we can remember far enough back to compare.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Stop trying to make me laugh.’ Toni’s mouth presses tight before she opens it again. She breathes sharply in, as if to make an announcement. ‘You can’t joke me out of this. Either you help me check this phone, or I’m getting in my car and I’m going to see if she’s really where she said she’d be.’ She looks into Bridget’s eyes.

‘Hold on, wait a second. What do you need me for anyway? If you want to check it, then check it.’

‘I… Come on, Bridge. You know more about these things than me.’

Bridget turns away. She throws her cloth into the bucket of soapy water, leans her hands on the countertop, one on each side of the sink. Behind her, her sister sniffs. In the quiet flat, Bridget hears the thrum of a plane as it passes overhead. Over thirty years ago, she and her sister made a pact. And there was, there is and there will forever be no going back.

She turns from the sink to see Toni weeping determinedly, elbows on the table, face in her hands.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘Give it here then.’

---

It is quarter to twelve. Bridget sits down next to her sister. There is no justification for doing what she is about to do, and part of her feels dirty even holding the damn phone. So she hands it to her sister.

‘You go as far as you can. If you get stuck, I’ll help, all right?’

Toni inputs Rosie’s password. The neat square apps bloom in orderly rows on the screen: Weather, Messages, Calendar, Photos, Camera, Clock, Maps, Videos…

‘This is wrong,’ Bridget mutters.

‘Please, Bridge. Just sit with me, will you?’

Safari, Mail, Phone, Facebook.

Toni presses the Facebook icon. Immediately, Rosie’s feed comes up in white, the familiar blue band across the top. On the globe icon there is the red notification flag: 15. Fifteen, like her age, like a ranking on this silly little world.

‘I’ve checked through her friends,’ she says. ‘I mean, I don’t know all of them, there’s hundreds, but there’s no one dodgy-looking, none of her teachers or school staff or anything; I checked against the staff list, including the caretakers.’

Bridget wishes Toni would shut up – leave her out of it. She no longer wants to put her arms around her. She would prefer, frankly, to wring her neck.

‘So you’re going to access her private messages? She’ll know you’ve checked her phone if you do that – you know that, don’t you?’

Her sister is biting her thumbnail and blinking over and over like she has sand in her eyes.

‘I have to,’ she says. ‘That’s the whole point.’

In an attempt to slow things down, in the hope that her sister will see sense, Bridget leans back in her chair. ‘OK. Let’s just scroll forward a second. What if you find a message from a boy? What then? Have you thought about that? She’s fifteen years old. She can have a boyfriend, can’t she?’

‘I’m not saying she can’t.’ Toni’s voice rises. ‘But she needs to know she can’t do that without telling me, or there’ll be consequences. She needs to tell me the truth.’

Bridget regrets having said anything. Regrets being here. She should have gone to Saph’s.

‘Otherwise how can I look after her?’ Toni continues, her voice as high as a child’s. ‘How can I protect her, Bridge, if I don’t know where she is or who she’s with?’

Bridget thinks of herself at that age, and all that she had to hide, the consequences if any of it had come out, and even after so many years, a wave of anxiety passes through her.

‘OK,’ Toni says, eyes fixed on the phone. ‘There’s a message from Naomi. I’ll just…’ She presses the icon.

Despite herself, Bridget leans in to her sister and reads the screen.

---

‘Oh my God,’ Toni shouts at the phone. ‘That’s this Thursday just gone. She’s not meeting Naomi today. I was right – I was bloody right. She’s… she’s been deceiving me all this time. Hang on, what’s this one…?’

---

Unease rises in Bridget, thickens.

‘The nineteenth,’ Toni says, her voice loud in Bridget’s ear. ‘That’s last Saturday. So she wasn’t meeting Naomi then either. I bloody knew it.’

‘Tones, wait. It’s not the end of the world. She’s probably—’

‘There’s no probably, Bridge. Stop sticking up for her. You’re always sticking up for her. She’s meeting a boy, and she hasn’t told me.’

‘All right, all right.’ Bridget snatches up the phone. ‘Calm down, Tones. Just calm down.’

‘What’s that message?’ Toni grabs the phone and stares into it. ‘What’s this one? Who’s Ollie Thomas?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Has she mentioned him to you? Is he from the theatre?’

‘I… I can’t remember. How could I possibly remember? Look, let’s see what his message says and then we’ll have a think, OK?’

Toni puts the phone in front of them on the table. There is an exchange of messages with this Ollie Thomas. Even from his tiny thumbnail picture Bridget can see he is good-looking. A real heart-throb, if you like that sort of thing.

---

---

---

‘May 2016!’ Toni cries. When she speaks again, it is through her fingers. ‘That’s a year ago! What does he mean, over here? What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Bridget replies quietly, chastened. ‘I don’t know.’