Holly was late. Which wasn’t like her. At all. Piper had sat outside the cafe – even though it wasn’t exactly warm, it was a bright, sunny, day and Piper would always rather be outside if she had the opportunity. Plus Holly’s voice tended to carry so Piper always felt better when there was more space for it.

She scrolled through her phone for a little while before making herself put it away, tucking it down inside her bra. Rob had replied yesterday with ‘YESSSS!’ and said that he was looking forward to seeing her again – ‘and the girls will be too.’ Every time Piper thought of seeing Mel and Dawn again her stomach fluttered with nerves. And she hadn’t even let herself think about whether Claire, her teen nemesis, would be there.

She looked up at the blue sky, the wispy white clouds, the tops of the pastel-painted buildings. She was so lucky to be living here. This was exactly what she’d always wanted, what she’d dreamed of. So the path to it hadn’t been what she’d imagined, but that didn’t matter, did it? If it got her to the same place?

She watched a group of girls sifting through the jewellery outside a store on the opposite corner. They called to each other, holding up necklaces and brooches, laughing and snapping photos on their phones. Piper thought they were maybe Spanish. On holiday or studying? Or maybe they were just pretending to be Spanish. Piper and her friends had done that once, in Liverpool. Getting the ferry over, pretending to be American tourists, all talking in dreadful accents picked up from Friends mostly. She’d told a guy on a market stall on Church Street that she was from Tulsa, Oklahoma, over on a cultural exchange. Mel, of course, said she was from New York – she was a dancer and she’d come over to study at LIPA, the performing arts school. Piper would never have thought of that. Not that anyone would have believed it of her anyway. They believed Melissa.

‘Sorry,’ Holly said, dropping into the seat opposite Piper.

Piper jumped a little. Lost in her own thoughts, she’d half-forgotten she was even expecting anyone.

‘Tube was fucked,’ Holly said.

She unwound a blue scarf from her neck and then shrugged her coat off her shoulders, letting it drop down onto the chair behind her.

‘It’s not warm enough to sit outside,’ she said. ‘We should go in once we’ve ordered.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ Piper said. ‘It’s nice.’ And Holly had just taken her scarf and coat off, so she couldn’t be that cold.

‘You’re never cold,’ Holly said, shrugging. She yanked the menu out of the wooden box it was tucked into, along with cutlery and napkins. ‘Have you been here before?’

Piper shook her head and then realised her sister wasn’t looking. ‘No. I’ve heard good things though.’

‘From who?’ Holly said, and glanced up at Piper. Her face was almost a sneer and Piper actually jerked back in her seat a little.

‘Loads of people,’ Piper said. ‘Matt.’

‘Ugh, Matt,’ Holly said, as she always did.

Piper smirked to herself. She didn’t usually have to mention Matt quite so early in her meetings with Holly. But today she seemed to be in a particularly snotty mood. Holly loved Matt. Holly loved Matt in a way Piper had never seen Holly love anyone, even her husband. Holly turned into an entirely different person around Matt and Piper couldn’t get enough of it. Matt said Piper was cruel. That of course Holly went to pieces around him because he was so gorgeous and amazing. And if he flirted with Holly a little, it was because Holly was hot, not because he wanted to make Piper laugh.

‘What did he recommend?’ Holly said, glancing up again. ‘Matt.’

‘Oh!’ Piper said. ‘I can’t remember if he did… I think he mentioned the pulled pork thing, but that might have been somewhere else.’

Holly pulled a face. ‘What are you having?’

‘Duck and sweet potato hash. It comes with kale but I can leave that. And a Bloody Mary.’

‘It’s eleven a.m.,’ Holly said.

‘Perfectly acceptable brunch drink.’ Piper took out her phone, saw she had no notifications, and put it back.

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Holly said.

‘What?’

‘Keep your phone in your bra.’

‘I don’t keep it there. I’ve just put it in there for now.’

‘James told me he read a thing that said it can cause breast cancer.’

‘Hmm,’ Piper said. That sounded unlikely. It sounded like the video someone once sent her of someone frying eggs with a phone. She wanted to take her phone back out and google it, but she forced herself to resist.

‘I’m going to have the smashed avocado,’ Holly said, putting the menu down on the table. ‘And a skinny latte.’

Piper’s stomach rumbled and she craned her neck to look inside the cafe, to see if a waiter was coming outside.

‘That’s the other problem with sitting outside,’ Holly started to say, but a waitress appeared at the end of the table and smiled at them both.

‘Could I have the duck and sweet potato hash?’ Piper said. ‘And a Bloody Mary. And a glass of tap water.’

‘I’ll have the same,’ Holly said.

Once the waitress had gone, Piper stared at her sister.

‘What?’ Holly said.

‘What happened to smashed avocado and a skinny latte?’

Holly closed her eyes briefly, reaching back behind herself to grab her coat.

‘I just… that’s what I always have. When we go to brunch.’ She meant her and her husband, not her and Piper. She and Piper hadn’t been to brunch for months. ‘And I just suddenly thought… fuck it.’

‘Wow,’ Piper said. Although she was already low-key worried that Holly wouldn’t like the hash and/or the cocktail and Piper would get the blame.

‘So,’ Piper said. ‘How’s things?’

‘Oh you know. The usual. I think you’ve probably got more to tell me than I have you.’

She somehow managed to make that sound like Piper had been indulging in levels of debauchery Holly would barely recognise.

‘Aunty Connie says hello,’ Piper said.

‘How was she?’

Piper frowned. ‘Older. And she repeats stuff a lot more. The flat wasn’t really clean. I don’t know… she was okay. Insisted she was fine and that Jim had totally overreacted. But… I don’t know.’

‘Shit,’ Holly said.

‘I know. I think we need to go home more often.’

‘I can’t,’ Holly said, immediately. ‘Work is completely insane. And James’s is not much better.’

‘You could manage once a month, surely?’ Piper suggested.

Her sister shook her head. ‘Once a quarter maybe?’

Who even measured time in quarters outside of the financial industry?

‘I’m going again next weekend,’ Piper said. ‘I’m going to the school reunion.’

‘Wow,’ Holly said, her eyebrows somewhere up near her hairline.

‘What?’

Before her sister could answer, the waitress reappeared with their drinks: two Bloody Marys and a jug of water with glasses. Piper swirled her drink with the celery stalk.

‘You’ve spent years avoiding home, avoiding your friends, and now you’re going back for the second time in a month?’ Holly asked.

Piper blinked. ‘I know. I just… It’s hard, going back. But I have to go back to see Connie and I bumped into Robbie and—’

‘Ah,’ Holly said.

‘What?’

‘That’s why you’re going. Because of Robbie.’

‘No. Not just because of him. He messaged me after—’

‘After you were on TV.’

‘Yes. He saw me on Hey, UK! And he messaged me and then I bumped into him when I was home and we had coffee and caught up and it was really great. And then he mentioned the reunion and I thought… why not?’

‘You are so naive,’ Holly said. ‘You’ve always been naive.’

‘What am I being naive about?’

‘He only contacted you because he saw you on TV. Obviously.’

‘But… why? I’m not famous. I can’t do anything for him. Why would you think—’

Holly shook her head. ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to start rushing up there every month. We can sort someone out to check in on Connie and you should get back on Tinder again.’

Piper pinched her own thigh through the fabric of the stripy dress she was wearing. She didn’t think she was dreaming, but Holly was being so weird that maybe it was just a particularly vivid one. But no. Ow.

‘What are you talking about?’ Piper said, incredulous.

Holly blew out a breath. ‘It doesn’t matter. Ignore me.’

‘No. Tell me. What’s the problem with me going home? Seeing Rob? He goes by Rob now, by the way, not Robbie.’

‘Of course he does.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with it. You should do what you want.’

‘Thanks,’ Piper said. ‘I will.’

They both took out their phones – Piper from her bra, Holly from her bag – and Piper spent the next ten minutes messaging Matt about Holly being even weirder than usual, while Matt responded with suggestions for things Piper could tell Holly about Matt to increase her weird crush, eventually sending a shirtless, duckface, mirror selfie that made Piper yelp with laughter.

‘What?’ Holly said. The first word she’d uttered for ten minutes. She’d mostly been focussed on huffing and furiously texting Piper didn’t even know who.

‘Matt sent me a selfie. Want to see?’ She was joking. Holly wasn’t keen on selfies either. Piper was surprised when she nodded, looking oddly nervous.

‘Seriously?’ She turned her phone round to show Holly. Holly’s face did something Piper wasn’t sure she’d ever seen it do before. She looked sort of slack, like she was about to faint clean away, then scared, and then an expression Piper couldn’t quite identify passed over, before she managed to wrestle it into a forced smile.

‘Loves himself, that one,’ she said.

‘Oh he absolutely does,’ Piper said. ‘It’s one of the things I love the most about him.’

Holly shook her head almost imperceptibly.

‘Want me to forward it to you?’ Piper joked.

When her sister didn’t answer, she looked up and saw that odd expression again. What was it?

‘Seriously?’ Piper said again.

Holly frowned. ‘No. Of course I don’t. God’s sake.’

The food, when it arrived, was unbelievably delicious. Piper had eaten almost a quarter when she thought to ask Holly what she thought.

‘It’s really good,’ Holly said. She had a smear of crème fraiche at the corner of her mouth. ‘The Bloody Mary is too. Can’t remember the last time I had a drink in the day.’

‘God,’ Piper said. ‘You need to loosen up.’

‘Understatement of the year, right there,’ Holly said.

Piper had been telling her sister she needed to loosen up for as long as she could remember. She didn’t think she’d ever agreed with her before.

‘Hol,’ she said now, swirling a piece of duck through sriracha sauce. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘No,’ she said, still looking down at her plate. She’d also separated the duck from the sweet potato from the kale, Piper noticed. ‘But it will be. Just some work bullshit.’

Piper had assumed Holly would want to go as soon as they’d finished their food, but she actually suggested getting lattes and Piper found that she wasn’t quite ready to go either. She and Holly had never been best friends, probably never would be, but she was clearly going through something and Piper wanted to try and help if she could.