Nana was listening to some Elvis as she set the table and served up chicken pasta and salad. I munched on a bread roll as Mum interrogated me about Caitlin.

‘She is feeding you meat, isn’t she?’ Mum asked.

‘Yes. There’s no way that Dad would stop eating meat. You know that he’d die if he couldn’t eat a roo steak,’ I reminded Mum.

Mum just huffed in response.

‘Here you go, dear,’ Nana said as she set the pasta before me.

As I started eating, Mum said, ‘How’s school?’

‘It’s okay,’ I told her. ‘I’m putting together a presentation on Patty Mills at the moment. It’s good how the school gives us more options to research the things we’re interested in.’

‘Don’t you already know everything there is to know about Patty Mills and basketball?’ Mum asked, seeming all agitated. I realised that it wasn’t about school or Dad or Caitlin. It made me feel nervous and I couldn’t wait to get to Katie’s.

I said I’d walk there after dinner, but Nana said she’d give me a lift so I jumped into her old Toyota Corolla.

‘Thanks for the dinner,’ I said.

‘My pleasure, dear. I’m just happy you came to visit your mother and me.’

Nana was silent for the rest of the trip. When we stopped outside Katie’s, she kissed me goodbye and held me by the shoulders. ‘You know she will be okay. She’ll get through this, I promise.’ I looked away, almost about to cry, and then she kissed me on the forehead and said, ‘Go on, go and have a good time.’

The first thing I noticed when I walked into Katie’s backyard was Cody Brown. He was throwing baskets from the free-throw line. Katie and Jane were right; he had lost all of his baby fat, got buff and had grown a few inches taller. He was really hot, but the incident with Trent meant that I had sworn to myself not to go near boys for a long, long time. Caroline was on standby to talk to Trent’s mum about what had happened that night at her place. She’d only recently got permission from her friend to share her story with Trent’s mum too. I still had to decide if I wanted to say anything. It wasn’t so straightforward. Given how dodgy Trent was, I wouldn’t put it past him claiming that I was drunk, or that I hit on him, or something like that.