Piper woke up in the night and turned over to find Holly on the other side of Connie’s bed. She was on her side facing Piper, fast asleep. Piper watched her for a while in the dim light from the streetlamp outside. She was really still. Piper shuffled across the bed, leaning closer, until she was confident her sister was in fact breathing and she could go back to sleep.

‘You awake?’ Holly asked what seemed like minutes later.

‘What time is it?’ Piper groaned, throwing her arm over her eyes.

She felt the mattress move as Holly presumably reached for her phone. ‘Eight.’

‘I’d better take Buster out.’ She sat up and stretched. ‘They’d have phoned us in the night, right? If she’d died.’

‘I don’t know,’ Holly said. ‘I’ll phone now.’

Piper got up, took her clothes out of the dryer, got dressed and fed Buster, the sound of her sister’s voice in the other room, on the phone to the hospital, making her stomach churn.

‘She’s awake,’ Holly said, coming through to the lounge. ‘They said she’s doing well. She asked for you.’

Piper’s eyes filled again and she grabbed Holly’s arm, pulling her into a hug. ‘Oh my god.’

‘I know,’ Holly said. ‘Want to go and see her when you get back from taking Buster out?’

At the sound of his name, Buster whimpered and wriggled on the spot.

‘I’ll book a cab,’ Holly said.

---

Piper bought a latte in Starbucks and walked down to the beach, crunching over the shells. While Buster ran around her in ever-increasing circles, occasionally stopping to bark at a seagull or chase another dog’s ball, Piper stared out to sea. Connie was alive. She was going to be okay. And Piper had hugged Holly without even thinking about it. She couldn’t even remember when they’d stopped hugging. Or why. It was ridiculous really.

Once she’d finished her coffee, she turned back up the beach, yelling for Buster to join her. By the time she got to the prom, he let her snap his lead back on and started tugging her towards home.

‘Not that way,’ she told him, steering him in the opposite direction. ‘Not yet.’

---

‘Hey,’ Rob said when he opened the door. ‘And Buster too.’

Buster darted between Rob’s legs and immediately started whirling and wriggling.

‘Dude, seriously?’ Piper said. ‘You’ve literally just been.’

Rob grabbed the dog and half-ran across his living room, sliding open the balcony door and depositing Buster outside.

‘I am so sorry,’ Piper said, as they both watched Buster pee on Rob’s tiled floor. ‘I didn’t think he’d have any left in him.’

Once he was done, Buster darted past the two of them back into the flat and jumped up on the sofa.

‘Yeah, you make yourself at home,’ Rob told him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Piper said again.

‘It’s not a problem,’ Rob said. ‘I always thought my sofa needed that wet dog smell.’

‘Not about that,’ Piper said. ‘But also about that, obviously. I meant about the other night. For leaving like that.’

‘For leaving like that and then ignoring my texts?’ Rob said.

Piper shook her head and, to her embarrassment, started to cry. ‘Connie had a stroke.’