‘That was Johnny – I was just the bloke standing beside him.’ Davey pictured Johnny Faye, his best friend, the exotic, genius singer-songwriter that flew so close to the sun but died an early and terrible death. Johnny Faye was a real rock star with the soul of a poet and a lion’s heart. Rabbit fell in love with him before she knew what love was. He was four years older, and yet she was always his little pal. He saw who she was and what she was capable of before anyone else. He named her. ‘She’s not a Mia, she’s a Rabbit,’ he said one day.

‘I like that,’ she said, and everyone else liked it too and that was it. He was right; she was born to be Rabbit. Back then, to Davey she was just his annoying baby sister but Johnny saw her potential. When she was fourteen years old he made her the band’s sound engineer, much to Davey’s disgust. ‘She’s shite,’ he’d said.

‘They’re all shite,’ Johnny pointed out, ‘but only Rabbit’s free.’

Davey had been jealous of their connection until Johnny got sick with multiple sclerosis, then she was the only one who could handle his moods and his needs. Without Rabbit, the band wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. Without her, Davey would never have tasted the possibility of success. Johnny lasted long enough to give Davey the drive to succeed no matter what or where. By the time Rabbit was old enough to be with Johnny he was pretty disabled. They had a moment, though. A shining moment where they were a couple in love, until Johnny did the decent thing and pushed her away before it all fell to shit. He didn’t want Rabbit to watch him rot and die, and a part of her never got over that. Even as she lay dying, Davey overheard her twice arguing with her dead ex-boyfriend and the love of her life. The first time it was about Juliet. ‘Well, Johnny Faye, if you hadn’t pushed me away you could have been Juliet’s father, not some random Aussie backpacker I didn’t know, but then again, either way she doesn’t have a dad. My poor Bunny.’ She felt low for much of that day.

The second time it was over religion. Johnny was a believer; it was a real bone of contention between them.

‘You’re in the ground, Johnny, so if I’m joining you I’ll join you there and you can stop singing . . . Sexy bastard.’ She’d chuckled to herself. He pretended he hadn’t heard her and that he’d just come into the room. She smiled for the rest of that evening despite her pain and anxiety. Marjorie was wrong: she didn’t idolise her brother, she idolised Johnny Faye.