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flat above a Chinese takeaway that they’ve made so nice. They keep it nice too; she hates mess.
    ‘What do you mean?’ She is feeling the adrenaline ebbing away. ‘Don’t be stupid, Gary. It’s just an argument, that’s all.’
    ‘Oh no,’ he says bitterly. ‘It’s not an argument. It’s a demolition job.’
    ‘Gary, it’s just that you said you’d told me yesterday that you were going to be late and you didn’t, and I—’
    ‘Yes, you played me back the whole evening, every sodding word. You know how people talk about CCTV cameras spying on them in the street? Try living with one.’
    She’s beginning to feel panicky, as if someone has put a hand round her throat. ‘Sorry, Gary, sorry! I won’t do it again—’
    She has to stop another clip starting to run in her head, the one when they’re out in the park and she’s saying, ‘Sorry, Gary, I won’t do it again.’ There are others waiting to follow; she talks over them fiercely.
    ‘I know I’ve said it before—’
    He gives a harsh laugh. ‘Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? I expect you can tell me every single time, with a description of where we were and what I was wearing and what the weather was like. The thing is you can’t help it, no matter what you say.’
    She’s crying now. ‘It’s a disability, Gary. You wouldn’t blame me if I couldn’t walk, or if I was blind.’
    He looks down at her – he’s tall, Gary, and not specially hot or anything, but she thinks he’s nice-looking with brown eyes and a kind smile. He isn’t smiling now.
    ‘It wouldn’t be weird if you were in a wheelchair or you couldn’t see. I’ve tried, but this is getting to me so it’s messing with my brain. I’m sorry, girl.’
    And then Gary had been lost, like everything else, including the little flat she loved possibly even more than she’d loved Gary. It had been a proper home, a place where she belonged. She’d never felt she belonged, before.
    She couldn’t afford to stay on, not on her wages, and she felt upset all the time, looking around knowing she’d have to leave. So tonight she had walked out too. Gary could settle up with the landlord. He wanted this; she didn’t.
    She hadn’t cried. It was pointless, crying. If your mother disappeared when you were eleven and you went into something that was unconvincingly called a home, then if when you were sixteen even that support was removed and you were all on your own, you knew that the only thing crying did was give you sore eyes to add to your problems.
    Instead you just tried to shut out everything you had the option to forget and took the misery inside you and carried it around like a stone in your heart until its weight began to seem normal. One day, though, as more and more miseries were added, there would be one that brought you to your knees. It could be this one.
    Marnie didn’t know where she was going to spend the night. In one of the darker doorways she passed there was what looked like a heap of rags, but then she caught the glint of the woman’s dark eyes and long, dark, greasy hair; she had a baby shawled up to her and she held out her hand, saying something in a language Marnie didn’t understand.
    She fumbled for her purse and found a pound coin. It wasn’t true charity; it was to make a clear separation between herself and someone like this, to banish the thought that this was the sort of someone Marnie might become now the ground had shifted from under her feet.
    There was no reason to get spooked by it. For the moment, at least, she was all right. She had money and money was safety. She had a decent enough job waitressing and sharing with Gary had meant she’d even been able to save a little bit. If she headed across into North London, where she could walk to work, she’d find cheap lodgings, just a room somewhere. Save on bus fares.
    If she walked there now, at the end of it she’d be tired so she might sleep instead of having to watch their last argument, like a