The Bedroom Assignment. Sophie Weston

made instant coffee in two thick china mugs and padded across the kitchen with them. Suze took hers, but she frowned with irritation.

      ‘I mean, you can’t keep going through men like they grow on trees.’ Her voice was full of righteous indignation. ‘Quite apart from anything else, it’s not fair to the rest of us.’

      Zoe gave a hollow laugh. ‘Is that right?’

      Suze did not notice it was hollow. ‘And it’s beastly inconvenient. I never know who you’re going to bring to a party.’

      Zoe pushed back her untidy brown curls and hitched herself up onto the corner of the cluttered table. ‘Well, if that’s all you’re worried about—’

      ‘Or if you’re going to bring anyone at all. And what he will be like if you do.’

      ‘I’ll make sure to send you the next one’s resumé,’ Zoe said dryly.

      Suze Manoir grinned. ‘Or you could just stick to the same man for more than a couple of dates,’ she suggested. ‘That would be a first.’

      Oh, Lord, thought Zoe. Aloud she said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’

      ‘Oh, you,’ said Suze, exasperated. ‘Okay. I’ll mind my own business. What do we need to do to get this house sorted?’

      ‘Just about everything,’ said Zoe wryly. ‘Starting with rewiring and moving on up.’

      The kitchen of the Brown family house was big and untidy. Just at the moment about a third of it looked beautiful. A wild green arrangement of leafy summer branches and ferns hid the peeling paintwork round the fireplace and the stains on the old pine table. Zoe had set out dishes of roast beef, and the Thai chicken and vegetable salads that she had prepared yesterday, all covered in plastic wrap. She had even set little groups of solid candles, ready for lighting, on the fireplace and one corner of the table.

      But that was the far end of the kitchen. The other two thirds, where they were sitting, looked like a shipwreck. A pretty shabby shipwreck at that, thought Zoe ruefully.

      She and her sister had slapped a coat of paint on the walls at Christmas, just to make it look more cheerful. But the whole house had a patched and mended air. Whereas Suze had shown an interior decorator round her central London pad for a television lifestyle programme, and the Manoir house was immaculately presented.

      Suze followed her eyes. ‘Hey,’ she said gently, showing that in this area, at least, she was right that they had no secrets. ‘So it’s a bit battered. Don’t worry about it. That’s why we’re having the party here, after all.’

      ‘Good point,’ agreed Zoe. ‘Okay, let’s kick back and party.’

      From the moment that they’d taken charge of their own birthday celebrations, Suze and Zoe had given a joint party at Zoe’s house. They chose a day in the summer, when hopefully people would be able to go out into the garden, and called it their Official Birthday. Suze said that the arrangement gave her more freedom than her parents’ house and more room than her own flat. But Zoe knew it was more than that.

      Suze knew that, ever since Zoe’s father had left home, money had been dreadfully tight—and, even worse, that Zoe’s mother had withdrawn into the cocoon of her own world. The Official Birthday Party was Suze’s way of helping out without admitting it.

      ‘You’re a good friend,’ Zoe said with affection.

      She went over to the big wipe-down board where the family left messages for each other. Today it had been wiped clear—no phone messages for Artemis, her twenty-year-old younger sister, currently out with boyfriend Ed, or notes about washing seventeen-year-old Harry’s rugby kit. Today it was covered by one orderly list in Zoe’s neat writing. More than half the items had already been ticked off.

      ‘You’re so efficient,’ said Suze with a sigh. She came up and stood at Zoe’s shoulder. ‘You’re really wasted here. You ought to be running a government, not this mad house.’

      Zoe flung up a hand.

      ‘Oh, all right,’ said Suze, as she always did. ‘You know your own business best. Got a job for next week?’

      Zoe pulled a face. ‘Just a couple of guided walks along the Thames. I’ll probably call the library department on Monday morning, see if they’ve got anyone sick.’

      ‘I wish you’d sign on with me again,’ Suze said wistfully. She ran her own very successful staff agency. ‘People are always asking for you.’

      ‘Maybe after the summer,’ said Zoe vaguely. She narrowed her eyes at the list. ‘Put up fairy lights in the apple tree. Glitter balls in the sitting room. Which do you want to do?’

      ‘Sounds like manual labour.’ Suze looked at her elegantly painted fingernails and shuddered. ‘We’ll do them together,’ she decreed.

      They went out into the garden first. Zoe brought the ladder out of the shed and slung it over her shoulder to carry it up to the orchard.

      ‘High-ho, high-ho,’ sang Suze, following behind with a coil of outdoor fairy lights.

      Zoe grinned over her shoulder. ‘I’m no dwarf.’

      It was true. She was nearly as tall as her six-foot father, and certainly as striking, with her candid, wide-open brown eyes and mop of unruly chestnut curls.

      ‘No, but you’re certainly one of the workers of the world,’ said Suze, watching as Zoe lodged the ladder against the tree trunk in a workmanlike manner. ‘Now, if Simon were here he could do it. That’s what men are for.’

      Zoe pushed a dusty brown curl behind her ear and measured the angle of the ladder. She adjusted it.

      ‘Well, Simon’s not coming,’ she said bracingly. ‘Get used to it. And hang onto the ladder. You don’t have to chip your nails. Just lean against it.’

      She climbed nimbly up the ladder into the branches of the apple tree. The ladder wobbled. Suze collected herself and leaned against it, hard. It stopped wobbling.

      Suze tilted her head to peer up at her friend. ‘What do you mean, Simon’s not coming?’ she demanded, outraged. ‘Tonight is going to be the North London party of the year. He can’t chicken out.’

      Zoe set herself astride a gnarled branch and looked down. She had done this many times before and she was dressed for it: thigh-hugging cycling shorts, elderly tee shirt that didn’t matter if it got torn. She had added flexible surfing shoes before coming out of the house. They improved her grip on the gnarled branches of the apple tree. Her soft brown hair was coiled round in a rough bun and skewered into place so that it did not catch on a branch. She leaned forward cautiously, holding out a hand.

      ‘Pass me up the lights. He didn’t chicken out.’

      Suze handed up a worn wooden wheel. A cable of fairy lights was coiled round it like New Age barbed wire. The wheel was on a central pivot, and Zoe hooked the ends into the sling she had tied around her body for the purpose.

      ‘Oh, don’t tell me,’ said Suze. ‘When you returned him to store you told him he was off the guest list tonight.’

      Zoe took a moment to replace a long hairpin more securely. Her wild curls never stayed in place, no matter how ruthlessly she restrained them.

      ‘We both agreed we could do with a breathing space,’ she said defensively.

      ‘Oh, that’s what it was, was it? Honestly, you’re hopeless.’

      Zoe clambered among leaves and twigs, uncoiling the lights. ‘It seemed best,’ she said in a muffled voice.

      ‘Okay, I know you only want men on a short lease,’ said Suze, unheeding. ‘But you could at least have held onto Simon until after our party. That’s only common sense.’

      Zoe was startled into a grin. She paused and stuck her head through the leaves to look down at her friend. ‘Suze