I drank it with Dad watching my every move. As soon as I was finished he said, ‘Let’s go.’

Next thing I knew, Dad and Caitlin and me were walking barefoot along the beach, with a gentle wave rolling in. The sun inched over the limestone cliffs up ahead.

Dad and Caitlin held hands, a sickly bubble of happiness while I felt like some refugee dragging my arse across a one-hundred-kilometre-wide salt pan. And then I scanned the coast to the clifftop and cringed as I spotted Trent’s cool house.

I was glad there wasn’t any surf because it meant that there was less chance that I’d bump into him on the beach. I imagined him looking at me through a telescope from the wall of glass that was the front of his house. I dropped back behind Dad and Caitlin.

We arrived at a cove. Dad started telling Caitlin and me about the ancient marine life embedded in the limestone and rocks, including shark teeth. Caitlin was fascinated, seeing Dad leaning down and pointing things out in the last of the summer sun.

‘Can we please just go, Dad?’ I begged.

Dad looked up at me, concerned because he knew that I usually liked learning about all that stuff.

‘I’m cold, kind of shivery,’ I told him, and I actually really was.

Caitlin threw an arm around me and gave Dad a look. ‘Well, this stuff isn’t going away anytime soon. We’ll come back.’

The walk didn’t shake how anxious I felt. I just knew that Mum was going to mess things up.

Dad and Caitlin were really worried. They made me rest and kept checking my temperature. Only, it didn’t seem like I had a cold or anything. I knew it was something else.

The thoughts and numbness in my body were still there when I woke up on Monday morning. I switched off my alarm and rolled onto my side, hugging my knees to my body.

‘Phoebe, you need to get ready for school,’ Caitlin called gently.

‘I can’t go.’

She came and sat on the edge of my bed. ‘What is it?’ She shook my leg.

I covered my head with the blankets.

‘Phoebe, whatever it is, you can tell me,’ Caitlin said. ‘You can tell your dad. I know sometimes it might seem like we’re the enemy, but we’re not. We love you and we’ve got your back.’

I sprung up from my bed, dying of guilt. ‘I’m fine! I just hate the damn hippie school you sent me to,’ I told her, trying to make her think I was in a mood because of her, because of them.