Leaving Mayra to wallow in a stinking heap of her own destruction, Ross, Risky and I find ourselves in the corridor.

‘You go that way, I’ll go this way,’ he says, desperately.

I run off with Risky to find Lauren.

Ruby

Staring into the bathroom mirror, I wonder why life does this sometimes. Why worlds collide in this way, why people jump into your life in such a way that it startles you to the point of reassessing everything, including yourself. You’re being led down a path that you think is maybe going one way, but suddenly there is a fork in the road and you find yourself going in a direction you never imagined. For me, this means a road of sympathy instead of frustration. Understanding rather than judgement. Openness to acknowledge, rather than a knee-jerk reaction to shut something down. The man from the bench is Lauren Pearce’s father. Everything I assumed about her has now been turned on its head.

I hear the door slam. I walk back into the bedroom expecting to see Rebecca, but instead I am faced with Lauren. This synchronisation of the cosmos leading me further into the unknown. She is looking out of the window. I must be in an alternate universe. One that is forcing me to stop and take stock. To realise that I have done the exact thing I fear people do to me to someone else: I have judged her completely by what she looks like and the tiny version of herself that she chooses to share with the world. I thought I had collated a detailed picture of the woman standing in front of me, but maybe I got her entirely wrong. I’ve failed to consider the layers that make up a person who is ridden with such self-loathing. I haven’t considered that grief may have been part of her experience, nor that the bubble of the perfect life I wanted to see was formed off the back of something so painful and sinister, rendering her flaws irreparable and her pain more real than any Instagram post could ever convey. I want to tell her I am sorry. Instead I stay quiet, peering from behind the door.

She is still in her white tracksuit, her hair perfect. She is looking out of the window and crying. What could have happened now – last-minute nerves? Longing for the sister who should be by her side? She has something in her hand that she keeps looking at.

I’ll give her the time she needs, she doesn’t have to know that I am here. As I step back from the bathroom door, I hear the little white bottle she has in her hand rattle. It’s a bottle of pills.