Lena’s nose and eyes tingled. After everything she’d been through the last twelve hours, it was speaking to her mother for thirty fucking seconds that was going to make her cry. ‘Mum, I’ve gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.’ She hung up, spent a minute breathing the tears away, made an apologetic face at the waiter and fled towards the bus stop.

A text from Mum: It was nice to hear from you. Wish you’d had more time to talk …

If Mum ever found out about the video, that would be the end. She was the most judgemental and least forgiving person ever, and Josh was exactly the kind of bloke her mum had warned her about.

‘Never trust a man who spends more time on his hair than you do,’ Mum’d say. And, ‘Never trust a man whose clothes cost more than your car.’ I don’t have a car, so that’s everyone, Lena’d bite back, and her mum would usually say, ‘You know what I mean,’ but once, after a big fight with the Dick, she said, ‘Exactly.’

The thing is, until she started uni Lena never even met any boys like that. She couldn’t have defied her mother, in this way at least, if she tried. But at uni they were everywhere. These beautiful, beautiful boys whose hair looked like it hadn’t been touched since they rolled out of bed, until you got close enough to smell the expensive wax and mousse and serum. Boys whose t-shirts cost more than her weekly pay. Boys whose girlfriends dressed like the librarian in a shitty teen movie. Either that or like they’d rummaged through the St Vinnie’s bin to piece together an outfit. Girls like Annie, who could dress like they were homeless because nobody would ever actually think they were. As Nic said, second-hand clothes were like day drinking, government handouts and having a lawyer: classy if you’re rich, proof you’re trash if you’re poor.

On the bus to Nic’s place, Lena opened Instagram. A bunch of new comments on her latest post, a photo of her that Annie took on the pub terrace on Friday. The setting sun behind her left shoulder is a fireball burning through dense grey smoke. Enjoying Sydney’s lovely fresh air, she’d written.

The first new comment said, u should post box shots here ud have heaps more followers. The next said, more tits less face.

She closed the app. It could be unrelated. Drive-by gross comments were part of being female online.

But the timing.

She reopened the app, deleted the comments and then, after a few seconds, the picture. It hurt; she had liked that one: the flattering apocalyptic light, the way her hair sat just right over her shoulders. The winking now-ness of the comment. But her top was very low cut, her lips definitely pouting.