I smile up at the trees. She’s so full of it, I know she feels the peace here. Connection. It flows as calm as the river.

‘So, are you sure you don’t want to poke Sam somewhere?’

I go under and come up choking, coughing out all the water I swallowed. Rhi learns from yesterday and is already up the bank losing her shit.

‘You’re a dirty bitch!’ I yell, racing out of the water after her.

She runs screaming ahead of me to the car. I stop at the towels and dry off.

The giggles from the car have me shaking my head. Womba thing.

Rhi drops me home and stays long enough to see I’m alone, before taking off to go check on her siblings. I don’t want to shower off the chill from the river, but Mum will take one look at me and know I’ve been swimming. I take a super-fast one to keep Nan’s lecturing voice at bay. Stashing my dirty clothes at the bottom of the laundry, I walk to Laney’s room.

Pushing the door open I think about the last time I’d seen her here, forcing her to get up. Between then and now, Mum and I have searched together and separately, and it didn’t look right anymore. There are no clothes on the floor and not a single shoe to throw. Laney’s bedside table is neatly stacked with her books and different things she usually leaves around the house, like her lip glosses, nail polish, hairbands and whatever else. Mum must’ve been bringing them in here bits at a time. It’s so stupid that it hurts to think of her presence leaving the rest of the house and coming to settle only in here. The bed is made, and everything is ready for when Laney comes home.

Sitting on her mattress I let it sink in. This space that she’d filled is now blank and empty. We are both pretty private, even being twins we don’t trespass in each other’s rooms. Being in here without her feels like a betrayal. When we find her I didn’t know how we were going to explain this to her. I pick up the black nail polish she loves so much and turn it around in my hands. There’s only so long I can put this off.

Swallowing my guilt, I reach for the top drawer of her bedside table. Inside everything is stacked as neatly as the outside and I frown. Of course Mum has been back here too. I flip through everything, and other than some defaced notebooks that Mum will shout about later, there isn’t anything that sticks out.