She wound the hessian rope around and around the fingers of her left hand. Remembered that the RA’s name was Juliette-but-you-can-call-me-Jules and that she was from South Australia. It’s why her accent was so posh, Annie had said, confusing Lena, who thought that Jules and Annie sounded so alike you would mistake one for the other through a closed door, but Annie was Sydney born and bred. Confused her, too, because why did being South Australian make you speak posh? She realised she knew nothing about South Australia or people from there at all and, as with so many of the things she didn’t know, she felt this was a thing that most people did know. It wasn’t like asking in class for the definition of metacognition or phonology. It wasn’t the kind of question people meant when they said there are no stupid questions.

‘I know you haven’t attended any of your classes this week, haven’t been returning to your accommodation. You’re not in trouble. I mean, that’s not—I’m not here to tell you off or anything. You don’t have to be so … Look, I’m trying to reach out, Lena. To find out what I—we—can do to help you. I spoke to the university liaison and he—’

‘Who asked you to do that?’

‘I didn’t identify you—not that it would … It’s confidential, anyway. I wanted to find out what could be done for you. He advised making an appointment with the student welfare office. Speak to a counsellor?’

The hessian was permanently wet. What a stupid material to make a shower bag rope from. Never properly dried, its fibres swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking, always damp and scratchy. She wound it tighter and tighter; it couldn’t be broken was the thing. Her circulation would be stopped, her damn fingers would drop off, before the rope gave the slightest bit.

‘Is that something you’d like me to do, Lena? Make an appointment with—’

‘No.’

‘Okay. So …’

It was properly dark now. Lena wanted to say, Get the fuck out of my room, but she had never been good at saying things like that. To her mum, to the Dick, to Will, sure. But with them she knew she was in the right. Everyone else, it was harder to know. People in general weren’t like her and her family. It made it difficult to know how to handle things.

‘I understand this is hard to talk about.’

If she understood that why did she persist? Again, Lena wanted to say the words but they wouldn’t come. She sat like a goddamn mute. Because what was the right response? There was a stranger in her room wanting to talk to her about how it felt to be fucked over and over again for an audience.

‘Wait,’ Lena said. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘The material was shown to me by—’