Tina smiled. ‘Hi,’ she said softly. ‘I’m Tina.’

Bette’s face broke into a beaming smile. Her eyes welled with tears. She laughed. Tina laughed too. And then Bette gathered up Tina’s right hand, kissed it, and said, ‘Hi. I’m Bette.’

There are moments in life that are longed for and don’t live up to their billing; and there are moments that arrive without fanfare but sear themselves onto our hearts for ever. This moment was the latter. Because for all the many thousands of times that Bette Porter and Tina Kennard had separately fantasised about reconcilation, neither woman had ever envisaged that it would happen when they were sitting at a breakfast counter at two a.m., having shared a golf video, and with a precious new grandson asleep nearby.

As they kissed, and kissed again, touching each other’s faces and gazing, endlessly gazing, gradually they felt the need to speak.

Bette attempted it first. But every time she tried, she just found herself overcome, shaking her head and smiling. Tina laughed through her own tears, sighing with relief.

Finally, Bette got a word out.

‘Years,’ she said.

Tina nodded. She bit her bottom lip, then whispered, ‘I love you.’

Now Bette nodded. ‘I love you too.’

Their lips met again. A gentle, heartfelt kiss followed by a huge sigh, and then a quiet, slightly conspiratorial laugh.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Bette confessed, kissing Tina’s hand again. ‘I’m feeling suddenly very unpractised at this.’

Tina nodded, holding Bette’s gaze in a way that let her know she understood.

‘We can take it slow,’ she said. ‘All that matters is that we know, right?’

Bette searched Tina’s eyes. ‘We know . . .?’

‘Where we’re headed.’

‘Right.’ Bette nodded. A beat. ‘Or we’re already there.’

Tina smiled. ‘You mean back together?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, yeah. We’re already back together, but we don’t need to rush things – other things – if we’re still a little . . .’

‘Mhmm.’

Bette nodded some more. She was very conflicted. Part of her wanted to take Tina by the hand and go straight to bed, to touch her, to taste her, to lie with her the way she’d longed to lie with her for God knows how long. But another part of her, a part she wished would fuck off, still counselled caution. Why?

Bette stood in the hallway of Grahame’s house and tried not to cry. It was six-thirty on a miserable, wet London morning in late October, but none of that was the reason.

‘I’ll send you videos, darling.’ Her neighbour stood holding Chomsky, who was staring at Bette with, she felt, betrayal in his stunning amber eyes.

‘Don’t let him in your bedroom,’ Bette said. ‘He goes for feet.’

‘Oh, I won’t. Malcolm’s got the bed anyway.’

Malcolm was Grahame’s cat. How he would cope with two new housemates was anyone’s guess, but Graham wouldn’t hear of Bette putting her pets into a cattery while she was in the States with no specific return date, so they’d all have to lump it.

Bette scratched Chomsky’s ears. He purred loudly and leaned towards her.

‘Do you want a minute?’ Grahame said, his rather heavily pencilled-in eyebrow raised knowingly.

A huge lump formed in Bette’s throat, so she just nodded, and Grahame handed her the huge fluffy cat. Bette felt his weight, the familiar ridges of his spine, the softness of the fur on his legs. He pressed his head against her chin.

‘I’ll miss you,’ she whispered. The purring got louder. And then she saw a shape scampering down the hallway. ‘Hey . . .’ she said. ‘Tibbsy . . .’

Setting Chomsky down, she picked up the other cat, a much smaller tortoiseshell, and kissed his head and said, ‘I’ll miss you too.’

Mr Tibbs didn’t like being handled as much as Chomsky did, so she set him down again, ran her hand firmly down his back, the way he liked, scratched him under the chin and then straightened up.

Okay, get a grip.

‘Grahame?’ she called.

Grahame appeared from the living room. ‘You all right?’

Bette smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’

‘Any time, luv, and listen – don’t worry about these two.’ He indicated the cats, who were now sitting side by side at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Just go and have a bloody good time and come back the most fabulous granny in the world!’

He posed like a glamour model. Bette laughed. Then she hugged him, placed a last kiss with her fingertip on her cats’ heads, then turned and left.

***

Tina opened her front door and dropped her bag in the hallway with an exhausted sigh. The house was quiet and dark. Barely seven in the evening, but she could have happily gone straight to bed.

‘Not tonight,’ she said as she closed the door, flipped on the lamp that sat on the hallway table and picked up a stack of mail. She flicked through the envelopes, then went into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

‘Damn.’

She’d forgotten to place a food order before she went out of town and now there was nothing, or nearly nothing, for Angie and Bette to have when they got in.

‘Please tell me you ate on the flight . . .’ she muttered, then picked up her phone and messaged them both on WhatsApp. They replied to say they’d eaten. Tina relaxed a little, then remembered breakfast, so she ordered eggs, milk, juice and some fruit from Instacart, then dashed upstairs, stripped off and hit the shower.

***

Alice . . . married . . . The shower was always Tina’s thinking place, and tonight her mind roamed towards Alice and the wedding shower tomorrow at a beach house near Redondo. Bette and Angie were flying in together from New York and they, plus Helena, were all driving down in the morning.

She poured shampoo into her cupped palm and began to massage her hair. So much is changing . . . Before Thanksgiving, Alice had been single. Very single. Then she went to London to visit Bette and came back in love with a woman called Eleanor who worked for Apple. On New Year’s Eve, Alice proposed, Eleanor said yes, and everyone was stunned. And yet you couldn’t be with them, couldn’t look at them, and not know that they were a stone-cold match.

Then no sooner do we get used to that than Shane and Tess are trying to adopt a baby!

She rinsed her hair, letting it fall down her back, swishing it from side to side.

New year, new directions, big decisions . . .

She was proud of her friends for going after happiness with such courage.

God knows, we’ve all had our disasters . . .

She reached for the shower gel and squeezed a little into her palm. Orange and bergamot by Molton Brown. A hangover from living with Bette for all those years – or at least that was what Tina told herself every time she bought it.

Bette’s car nosed gingerly through the traffic as she sat in the quiet, insulated back seat reading her notes. It felt daft sometimes. The journey wasn’t even two miles, she could walk it easily, but on days like today half an hour to concentrate was precious. Not to mention the weather . . .

‘What is wrong with this country?’ she murmured, looking out at the grey, blustery street as her phone pinged with an alert.

She checked the lock screen, smiled, then went back to her notes. There was a musical guest today, singing a cover of ‘Don’t Stop’ by Fleetwood Mac. She tapped her pen against her lip, trying to recall that song . . . Didn’t Tina sing that in the shower? Or was it while she was cooking? In the early days, she played music everywhere in the house . . .

The car moved off again and fifteen minutes later Bette was stepping out and striding up a wide, horseshoe-shaped courtyard towards a row of glass doors that were continually in motion at one of the world’s truly 24/7 workplaces.

A quick good morning and a flash of her pass to the woman on reception, and then she was in the lift up to the fourth floor, stepped out, said hi to someone she knew, and into the staff kitchen to make up a flask of green tea – more hellos, quick catch-ups about the weekend – then her assistant found her and they walk-and-talked down the corridor before disappearing into a door labelled ‘WH Production’.

An hour later Bette was talking with the same assistant – Kyle – as everyone left the room.

‘I swear, I’ve never seen it,’ Bette insisted.

‘Well, I wouldn’t tell anyone that,’ Kyle laughed, and then he tapped the shoulder of the young woman in front of him. ‘Hey, Becky’ – Kyle pointed at Bette – ‘never seen Harry Potter!’

‘What?!’ Becky’s eyes were huge.

‘You said not to tell anyone and then you tell her?’ Bette protested.

The young man just laughed and walked away, leaving Becky staring at Bette in a way that Bette had become used to.

‘If you want to go and see it sometime . . .?’ the young woman said, biting her lip.

‘Timothy Dwight College, Yale’s ninth residential college, opened on September 23^rd 1935 at an over-budget cost of $2,000,000. It was—’

‘Alice?’

‘What?’

‘Shut up.’

Tina spoke with her eyes closed, her face tilted up to the late summer sun as the two old friends sat side by side on the lawn in the courtyard of Angie’s new school.

‘I thought you might wanna know what kind of joint you’re leaving my Earthdaughter in,’ Alice said.

Tina half-opened one eye and saw that she was still scrolling down her phone.

‘Just enjoy the sun a while,’ she said gently.

Alice dutifully clicked her phone shut. Tina closed her eyes again. Focused on her breath. In, out. In, out. I am exactly where I am meant to be . . . I am exactly where I am meant to be . . . I am—

The sun moved behind a cloud. A synthetic, fruity scent tingled Tina’s nose and she opened her eyes. Alice was sitting cross-legged, vaping and watching the freshmen crisscrossing the courtyard. Some were trailing huge suitcases, some reading their phones, some just staring up at the college’s elegant Federal-style facade, the russet-brick and the rows of windows with black or white faux shutters.

‘What time is it?’ Tina asked.

‘Oh, I’m allowed to use my phone now?’ Tina rolled her eyes. Alice picked up her phone and checked it. ‘Eleven-thirty.’

They were waiting and minding Angie’s luggage while she went to the residence office to collect the key to her accommodation. She’d been gone a lot longer than Tina had expected. If she’d known it would take an hour, they could’ve gone and got coffee. Also: no update from Bette.

‘The students of Timothy Dwight were originally known as “Prexies”,’ Alice read, back on Wikipedia. ‘Weird, sounds like cereal . . . Oh, but wait, now they’re “Lions”, after their mascot. I guess that’s kinda cool. I wish I’d had something like that, but my mother thought I should live with her . . . Our mascot was a bottle of Kahlua and an air of permanent shame and disappointment.’

She kept scrolling. Tina watched, aware again just how fortunate Angie was.

‘You turned out okay, though,’ she said, nudging Alice’s knee.

‘Huh. I tell you, I’m just glad I’ve got your daughter. She’s the best thing in my life right now, except for the booker at the Home Shopping Network and my – whoa, listen to this! They’ve got a song. “Ring the bell, ring the bell! Goddamn, fuck, hell! Horseshit, assbite, nobody’s better than Timothy Dwight!”’