Among the responsibilities she'd taken upon herself while Hannah was coming to grips with Rona's situation, Sacha had decided to take care of food preparation for the both of them. Not breakfast: Hannah was never up when Sacha left for work, unless it was because she was returning home from the night before; not lunch, obviously - now that they'd moved in together there didn't seem much point upholding their occasional lunch-time meetings; but dinner-time was all Sacha's. She'd already proven her chops with the first dinner she'd cooked for them both, when she'd just moved in, and though she hadn't repeated the feat since and had no particular mind to even now, dinner didn't need to be extravagant.

She wasn't sure if there was anything in particular that Hannah didn't eat, so she made it a habit to run everything past Hannah first. She usually did whatever food shopping needed to be done at lunch-time - it was as good a use of her break as anything else - and kept the groceries in the small fridge in the kitchen at work until the day was done.

On Wednesday, she called Hannah and said:

"I thought I'd make a stir-fry tonight."

"Sounds nice" said Hannah, though with an evident lack of enthusiasm. Subtlety and tact had never been strong points of hers.

"It'll be a really good stir-fry, though."

"Oh, okay!" Hanna's voice perked up as she sensed a big effort in the kitchen coming up.

"Anything you don't like?"

"Brussels Sprouts" Hannah replied instantly.

"Okay . . . Well, I don't think that'll be a problem tonight . . ."

At lunch-time Sacha grabbed her shopping-bag and caught a couple of trams to Victoria Street, to the Vietnamese strip where Rona had once taken her shopping. The tram crawled up the narrow road, which was clogged as ever with traffic, and Sacha started to worry that she might not get back into the office in time. But in terms of distance, it wasn't a very long journey, and Sacha soon got off the tram and started walking down the footpath.

It was as she remembered it, overflowing with Asian groceries all with their wares stacked on the footpath, exotic vegetables and fruits mingling with more familiar fare. Sacha didn't need anything particularly fancy: just some bok-choi, a few snow-peas maybe, some Vietnamese mint, some Thai basil. Everything else was already at home, saved from previous nights. It was a hot afternoon, and many of the herbs - so essential to what Sacha had in mind - were hidden under glistening-wet layers of newspaper, staying cool and fresh, and Sacha had to ask for what she wanted. It was all cheap and all good quality. She decided to get some coriander, too, then realised she wasn't sure if Hannah could eat it or not - oh well, no matter, Sacha could put some on her food if not Hannah's. Oh, and chilli too! In a daze, trying to think of everything she needed, Sacha wandered into one of the grocery stores to get a small bag of fresh chillies, of the kind always kept indoors, in a fridge. Not realising which shop she was in, she was wrenched out of her reverie by somebody calling her name:

"Sacha?"

It was a familiar voice, one she hadn't heard in a long time, accented. She turned around.