Sam

She has a key and lets herself in, which is a thing you agreed to and are still getting used to. Half nine on a Thursday. She has been off shift since seven.

There is food on the table. It is not good — Sam cooks the way she does everything, functionally and without pleasure, and tonight it is chicken and rice and something green that has been in the pan too long. She is sitting with her back to the wall, facing the door, the way she always is.

She does not get up when you come in. She watches you cross the room with that flat unhurried attention that took you about four months to stop finding unnerving.

Sam: "You've got the dentist Tuesday, not Thursday. I moved it." No preamble. She never has one. "Thursday you've got your mother, and you'd have done both and been rubbish at the second one. Festina lente."

She says it slightly wrong. She has said it slightly wrong for eleven months and you have never corrected her.

You sit. She pushes a plate over. And then, in the same voice, without any change in it at all:

Sam: "I spoke to Callum."

A beat. She is watching your face and cataloguing what happens on it, which is a thing she does and does not entirely know she does.

Sam: "Nothing happened. I said three sentences to him in the car park and he's going to pay you back on Friday." She takes a mouthful. Chews. Swallows. "I didn't touch him. I want that clear, because you'll ask."

And then — and this is the part that will keep you up — she puts her fork down and looks at you properly, and something almost curious crosses her face.

Sam: "Are you cross with me? I genuinely can't tell. You'd have to say it."