‘Hi!’ I said.

They stopped and both looked back at me.

I hugged my arms and hurried closer. When I reached them, they still didn’t say anything. I heard a round of laughter from an invisible courtyard, and caught the secret smell of cigarette smoke.

‘Are you going back to your place?’

They looked at each other.

‘We . . . can,’ said Dan.

I put my hands on my hips. Dan put his on his.

‘You guys,’ I said.

‘We’re not in a hanging-out space,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I don’t want you to do anything,’ I said.

‘Sounds good,’ he said.

‘Dan,’ said Lachlan.

Dan looked at Lachlan, which really let me know I was in trouble; I should not have needed Lachlan on my team.

‘You tried really hard to get me to come out,’ I said.

‘I tried sort of hard. We were there for hours.’

‘I was getting ready,’ I said.

Dan looked at my jeans and shirt.

‘Lachlan, was it really hours?’ I said.

Lachlan raised his eyebrows.

‘You don’t have to answer that,’ I said.

‘It was hours,’ said Lachlan.

‘Oh,’ I said.

It was all supremely hopeless, and Dan looked amused.

‘Don’t smile,’ he said, even though he was the one smiling. ‘We were both waiting for you. You’re completely in the wrong.’ He gathered himself and tried to look stern. He said, ‘Thank you for coming out.’ He said, ‘I’m sorry we want to go.’

‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘Where are you even going?’

‘Nowhere. Somewhere personal.’

I stared at him.

He shrugged. He was over it.

‘See ya,’ Dan said.

‘See ya,’ I said.

‘See ya,’ said Lachlan.

I stood there in the street until they turned off and disappeared to wherever they were going.

Somewhere personal!

When I got home, it was after midnight and the spring was over.

When Dan had finished uni and started work as an assistant at an interior design firm, his induction had included an icebreaker activity wherein participants were tasked with devising three-second impersonations of their friends and families. He’d come home that night. ‘Wanna see yours?’ he said.

‘Nope,’ I’d said, but he went ahead and showed me anyway. He marched down the hallway with his shoulders thrust back, then stopped abruptly, frowned, mimed removing a pair of earbuds, sighed, and said, ‘Sorry?’

It was devastating in its accuracy. Terrible in the qualities it chose to highlight, to the exclusion of others. It also had the knock-on effect of reinforcing this behaviour, which I began to think of as especially ‘me’. So when I woke up in the morning, with all my disturbing questions – Where was ‘somewhere personal’? Had I really met Chris L? – what I really wanted was to go out into Brunswick for a good long walk, with earbuds in and nobody bothering me.

But Dan was in the kitchen when I got up, having come back to Brunswick anyway for an exercise class, and he came through with a textbook opportunity.