‘Just going to the toilet, Dad,’ I said. I thought I was going to faint or spew or something so I bolted out of my seat as quickly as I could.

There were hundreds of people still making their way to their seats, so I pushed past them and walked to the corner of the stadium to try to pull myself together.

I was shaking, my heart was beating flat out and my chest was tight. I raised my arms above my head like Caitlin did and breathed deeply, and then let my breath out slowly. Don’t worry about Mum, I told myself. And then I took another six deep breaths. When I opened my eyes I heard the crowd inside and saw everyone piling in to the stadium and thought, What the hell am I doing out here?

As I walked back to my seat I was relieved that I felt much better and could actually focus on my snacks and the game.

In the first half the Lightning were losing by nine points but shortly into the second half my favourite player shot a couple of three-pointers and was rebounding everything to put Lightning back into the game.

Dad and I were both on the edge of our seats and high-fiving each other when the smallest Lightning player on the court wove around the Sydney Flames players to throw up a shot. It rolled around the rim of the basket for ages before it finally dropped.

We hugged and jumped up and down and went wild with all of the other supporters. I felt a huge jolt of adrenaline course through my body as everyone cheered when watching the replay. Dad looked so happy and I realised that I had a huge smile spread across my face too.

The best thing was that watching the game actually made me feel enthusiastic about playing basketball again. I realised that if I focused, if I let myself enjoy it, I could be a real asset to my team.

Later, when Dad and I were merging with all of the traffic in the car park, he said, ‘I reckon I’ll give your mum a call.’ That jolt of adrenaline that I was feeling pretty much disappeared as if it had been sucked out of my body with a huge needle.

‘What for?’ I said, cautiously.

‘To double-check she can be with you when we go to New Zealand,’ he said. We came to a standstill in traffic and Dad called Mum on the car’s bluetooth speaker.

‘What?’ Mum answered, sounding all crabby.

‘Hey Bron,’ Dad said in a mockingly cheerful way, ‘you’re on speaker. Phoebe and me are driving home from the Lightning game.’

‘Hi babe,’ Mum said, changing her tune, quite a lot.

‘I’m calling to check that you’re all right to have Pheebs for a whole week next month, around mid-March?’

‘Why?’ Mum asked.

‘Caitlin and I are going to New Zealand.’