Nell had put the sofa cushion over the stain, arranged six crackers on a plate, and switched off the big light. From the doorway, the living room looked almost expensive.
Then Iris came in carrying a toilet brush.
“Not on my opening night,” Nell said.
“Where do you want it?”
“In the toilet, traditionally.”
“It's new. I brought you something too.”
Iris put a bag on the kitchen counter. Inside was a peach, two little tubs of yogurt, and a packet of hair ties.
“Your last one broke this morning.”
Nell touched the pencil holding up her hair. “You noticed that?”
“It was a terrible look.” Iris took off her shoes with two quick kicks. “What's the occasion?”
“We're having a night out.”
“Are we?”
“Without going out. Shoes are forbidden. Drinks are cheap. The bouncer likes us.”
On the little table, she'd put the cracked wineglasses they used for everything. A bottle of supermarket lemonade sat in a bowl of cold water. She had brought the crackers home from the bakery after the packet split. Iris would know that, but it didn't stop her picking up the plate as though she'd been served something lovely.
“Six? Who else is coming?”
“Don't fill up before dinner.”
“There's dinner?”
Nell opened the oven. Two potatoes, each with a split down the middle, sat on the old tray.
Iris set the plate aside. “Sit down. I'll finish those.”
“I'm hosting.”
“You've been on your feet since ten.”
“So have you.”
“I sit behind a desk and tell drivers which door to use. It's not heroic.”
She nudged Nell away with her hip and took the block of cheese from the fridge. The grater had a broken handle. Iris held it through a folded dish towel and got to work.
Nell sat on the kitchen stool. Her socks had little holes under both big toes. She curled them underneath the rung.
Through the open window came the smell of somebody's fried onions and the sound of a car refusing to start. Their upstairs neighbor had begun her evening exercise routine. They could hear each determined landing.
“She's going to come through the ceiling,” Iris said.
“We'll charge her rent.”
“Don't joke. Her share would change my life.”
Iris put the radio on. A woman was explaining how to enter the station's Big Bellweather Draw. Three hundred thousand dollars. They'd heard the announcement so often that Nell sometimes finished it along with her.
“You ever enter?” she asked.
“Last month.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I didn't win.”
Nell grabbed her phone. She entered her own details while Iris went back to the potatoes. The entry took less time than arguing about the heating bill.
“There,” Nell said. “We'll be rich by Friday.”
Iris looked over. “I haven't done this draw yet.”
“Do it now. I want double chances.”
“You don't get double chances. I get a chance.”
Nell put a hand to her chest. “Our friendship means so little.”
“Our friendship is waiting for its potato.”
But Iris picked up her phone. Nell watched her tap through the entry, one finger, brow creased as if the radio station might try to trick her out of the money before she'd even won it.
“Okay,” Iris said. “Both in.”
“We split it.”
Iris's finger paused on the screen.
“If either of us wins,” Nell said. “Half each. Proper half. No taking the other one for a burger and calling that a share.”
“You think I'd do that?”
“I think you'd get fries as well and feel pretty good about yourself.”
Iris smiled. “Fine. Half each.”
“Say it without holding cheese.”
“Nell.”
“It's a solemn occasion.”
Iris put down the cheese. She held out her little finger, the way they had at fourteen when they promised not to tell anyone who each other liked. Nell linked hers through it.
“Any money we win in the draw,” Iris said. “Half each.”
“Half each.”
They shook on it, awkwardly, without letting their fingers separate. Iris pulled too hard and Nell nearly slid off the stool.
“First purchase,” Nell said, steadying herself. “Chairs that love me.”
Iris returned to dinner. “I'd get you a coat. A proper one. The zip on yours is dead.”
“It's resting.”
“And I'd buy a dishwasher.”
“We haven't got room.”
“Then a room for the dishwasher.”
They ate on the sofa with the plates on their knees. Iris had saved the best browned bits of cheese for Nell. Nell gave her the larger potato without mentioning it.
They'd moved into this flat three years ago with a mattress strapped badly to Ben's borrowed van. Before that, they'd lived separately for a while, close enough for Nell to go around in her pajamas. Before that, there'd been school, cheap headphones shared on buses, Iris sleeping over when Nell's father got loud. It was hard to think of anything important without finding Iris somewhere in it.
Nell's phone lit up on the arm of the sofa.
Sam: Tomorrow. Six. Hungry?
She typed, Always.
Then another message arrived.
For food, Nell.
She laughed with a mouthful of potato.
“What?” Iris asked.
“Nothing.”
“That kind of nothing.”
Nell turned the phone facedown, still smiling. Sam was cooking for her tomorrow. After eighteen months together, she still checked herself in shop windows on the way to his place.
“Take your blue shirt,” Iris said. “I washed it.”
“You didn't have to.”
“I had a load on.”
For a moment Nell wanted to hug her. It was a small thing, the shirt. But the sleeves had been sticking out of her laundry basket all week, and tomorrow she could put it on without thinking.
“You're going to miss me if we go to Northbay,” she said.
Iris scraped the last cheese off her plate. “You'll come back.”
“It's only the season.”
“Exactly.”
Nell looked at her phone again. She liked that Sam made plans in the real world. He gave her a time, cooked food, opened the door when she knocked. Four years earlier she had loved a man she'd never stood beside.
Jonah. Five months of messages, pictures of ordinary streets, good mornings arriving before her alarm. She was twenty-one. They hadn't met yet when the message came from his brother saying Jonah had died.
She'd stared at the words until she couldn't make them into anything. Even now she sometimes remembered a thing she wanted to tell him before remembering why she couldn't. On bad nights she still opened one of his old messages: You don't have to be good company to come home.
Iris had met the return bus. Nell still remembered her standing by the shelter in the rain, holding Nell's coat open for her.
Sometimes the shame came back before the sadness. How did you explain missing a man you'd never touched? Iris had never asked her to explain.
“Your potato's getting cold,” Iris said.
Nell took another bite. Iris stretched her legs across Nell's lap and put on the awful dating show they both loved.
Ten minutes later they were arguing over which contestant was lying. Nell forgot the phone. She forgot her sore feet. When Iris leaned forward to shout at the television, Nell caught her plate before it slid onto the floor.
“Thank you,” Iris said, taking it back.
“That's going to cost you three crackers.”
“There's only one left.”
“Then you owe me.”
Iris broke the last cracker in two and gave her half.