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Sarah Havenant glanced at her phone as she walked to Examining Room Three. She was expecting a message from Ben, her husband, telling her whether he could pick up their son, Miles – a mere seven years old but, all of a sudden, every bit the rebellious teenager, which was a surprising and unwelcome transformation – from the farm camp where he was spending a week of his summer vacation. If not it meant she would have to leave the Barrow Medical Center as soon as she finished work and head over there to get him, which would mean no stop at the gym on the way home and no workout.

And today, more than most days, she needed a workout, because she had just come from a patient who Sarah had told, sitting there in the examining room, that the results of the tests she had been for were not good; in fact, they were awful, and, given the particular form of cancer she had, it was probable her life expectancy would be measured in months and not years.

The patient – Amy, she was called – had left almost without a word. Her husband was with her; he had started asking questions, but Amy had stood up and shook her head and told him they could get more details later, but right now all she wanted to do was leave.

I want to go and see Isla, she’d said.

Isla, her nine-month-old daughter. A daughter who would, barring a miracle, shortly be motherless.

So she needed the gym. And then she would go home to Ben and Miles and five-year-old Faye and two-year-old Kim and a meal and then stories and bathtime and bed. And she would make sure to say a prayer of thanks – even though she was not religious in any way – for her family.

But there was no message from Ben. There was, however, a Facebook friend request, from a name she hadn’t thought of for a long time. A decade, at least.

Rachel Little.

Who was not really a friend. She’d been at Barrow High School with Sarah, but she’d not been part of Sarah’s circle. She’d not been part of anyone’s circle, really. She didn’t fit; high school was carefully stratified into tribes – jocks, cheer squad, chess club – and Rachel was into tarot readings and the occult and weird food fads. It probably wasn’t true, but Sarah remembered her eating and drinking nothing but home-made vegetable juices, which she enthused about to anybody who would listen.

Rachel had been tall and long-limbed, but not in a graceful way. In a not-quite-in-control of her hands and feet way, and her hands and feet were prominent, because she always wore pants and long-sleeved shirts – never dresses or skirts or tank tops or T-shirts – and they were always too short for those long, gangly limbs.

But still, she was nice enough, and it would be interesting to see what she was up to. That was one of the great things about Facebook. You could keep in touch with lots and lots of people in a non-committal way. Ben thought it was a waste of time – he’d deleted his account a few months back – but Sarah liked it. She liked people, and she was interested in their lives.

She paused at the door to Examining Room Three – inside was her last patient of the day, a hypochondriac man in his early forties who enjoyed splendid good health but was convinced he was dying – and opened the friend request.

Hi Sarah! It’s me, Rachel! Recently got on Facebook (a bit late but you know me – not exactly with it!) and thought I’d look you up. Hope you’re well. I’m in the process of moving back to Barrow so maybe we’ll catch up. One question – is this the right account for you or is it the other one (with your name and photo on)?

Sarah frowned and typed a response.

Rachel! Would love to catch up. At work or I’d write more. And I only have one account – this one!

She sent the reply, walked into Examining Room Three, and forgot all about it.

Ben, it turned out, was able to pick up Miles. His message – OK re: Miles – was typical of him. He treated email and text messages as vehicles to pass on the maximum of information with the minimum of words. He claimed it was because he was British and didn’t believe in idle chat, but Sarah thought it was really because he harbored some vague idea that the more words you wrote, the more the message could cost. Either way, Miles was taken care of, so she stopped at the gym on her way home and joined, a few minutes late, a spinning class. Afterwards, she walked outside with Abby, a marketing graduate in her mid-twenties who had played lacrosse in college and who took, it seemed to Sarah, a too obvious pleasure in out-spinning the late-thirties moms and retirees who made up much of the gym-going population of Barrow.

‘Ugh,’ Abby said. ‘So hard. My thighs were burning. She’s the best instructor.’

She was Tanya, a woman who was a few years older than Sarah but who had a body that, as a doctor, Sarah considered to be a marvel of medical science. She did the class with her charges but, when they were dissolving into puddles of their own sweat, she was untroubled. And, as she spun, she would shout out what to do next. The fact she was capable of rational thought was impressive; that she could speak was amazing; that she could shout was beyond belief. Although it was ridiculous – she was a thirty-eight-year-old mother of three with a husband with whom she still had an active (and not unadventurous) sex life – Sarah had, she realized, a bit of a crush on Tanya. Not – she didn’t think – in a sexual way, but in a I-want-to-be-this-person way. She was awestruck by Tanya, and found herself wanting to impress her with her spinning skills, a mission which was likely to result only in Tanya wondering why Sarah was so easily reduced to a red-faced and panting wreck.

‘She is phenomenal,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t know how she does it.’

‘Lots of hard work,’ Abby said, with the literal-mindedness of the young. ‘There’s no secret sauce that gets you in shape.’

‘I guess so,’ Sarah replied, wishing there was a secret sauce that got you in shape. She took her phone and car keys from her bag. ‘See you next time, hopefully.’

‘I’ll be here for Thursday’s class,’ Abby said. ‘See you then.’

Sarah nodded and opened her car door. She put the keys in and started the engine. As she waited for the air-conditioning to kick in she looked at her phone.

There was a new message from Rachel.

Great! I’ll let you know when I’m back in Barrow. And here’s the other account in your name! It’s definitely you!

There was a link. Sarah tapped it with her forefinger and it brought up a Facebook account.

She frowned. It was her name. Sarah Havenant.

She scanned the page. Married to Ben. Mother of three kids.

And the profile photo was of her. She was smiling and looking straight at the camera, standing by an ice rink they had skated at a lot last winter. She remembered that particular day: she was wearing the coat she’d bought at one of the outlet stores in Freeport. It was made from some new material – super lightweight but super warm – and she’d been struck by how much she wished they’d had things like this when they grew up; most of her childhood winters had been spent wrapped in so many layers it made movement practically impossible.

But it was all irrelevant. The question was, why the hell was there a Facebook account purporting to be her? And, more to the point, who had set it up?

She scrolled down.

And froze.

The most recent post was from that morning. It was a photo of Miles, Faye and Kim sitting on a beach towel eating peanut butter sandwiches, and it had a caption:

Turns out Kim likes sand sandwiches. Thanks to her older siblings for putting the sand in her sandwich and helping her discover this!

Sarah stared at the screen. This was not some random photo of her at an ice rink six months ago. This had happened yesterday.

They had been at the beach, and, at lunchtime Miles and Faye – it was more Faye, in truth – had told their youngest sibling the reason they were called sandwiches was because they had sand in them, and, desperate for attention, Kim had nodded agreement. Smiling, they had spread mayonnaise on bread, sprinkled it with a liberal dose of fresh, warm sand and handed it to her.

Mmm, Kim said, as they encouraged her to eat it. I love sandwiches.

But no one else knew about it. They had come home late in the afternoon, and, once the kids were in bed, Sarah had spent the rest of the evening getting ready for work.

Slowly, she began to scroll through the rest of the post.