‘Cool,’ I nodded.

‘New York’s so,’ said Vivian.

‘I know,’ said Chris L. ‘And Melbourne’s so.’

I died inside and curled over into a toothpaste worm, covering my ears as totally as possible without looking obvious and rude. I had always thought my ideal boyfriend would live in a hard-to-reach location, on a voyage or in a jail. Imagine having a boyfriend who lived in New York always, a hard-to-reach location if there ever was one. A place of close streets, pink buildings, good things and bad, don’t smoke on the fire escape, pick up after your dog. It seemed tragic and interesting, to fly over the world with no sense of responsibility for where you might end up. The idea was powerful and stupid.

Was this what a crush felt like – brainless and harsh? It felt right and wrong at the same time, which meant it had to be wrong. I couldn’t like Vivian, we had barely said six words. I just hadn’t slept with someone in a very long time, and wet cement and chlorine had a provoking quality.

I had to do something before I did something more drastic, like find a strange excuse to lean over and touch his leg.

‘Chris L,’ I said, interrupting him mid-sentence. He had been saying something about guys here, or guys there, but when I held out my hand, he tilted his head towards it. He took it decisively. His mouth went very firm. It was the first time in a long time that I had held someone’s hand, and I was surprised at its dryness and its toughness.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked me.

‘Somewhere personal,’ I said.

We walked down the bleachers. ‘That was kind of boring,’ Chris L whispered. ‘Thanks for saving me.’

The day was hot, the walk was short, then we were at the water. ‘No problem,’ I said.

He jumped into the pool.

He came up for air laughing and saying something else. But I was already walking back up the bleachers, looking up at Vivian, who was looking at me.

You sometimes heard stories about things happening to guys, of walking into certain houses in certain suburbs and finding more people in there than you had expected, or opening the door one day to let a stranger in and finding you had been visited by a different stranger, a stranger you had not agreed to accommodate.

But these stories were consequenceless if you took precautions; they were in the category of repealable things, not like what happened to other people – terrifying things – and as such, our precautions were almost supernaturally useless. Dan and I left index cards at the feet of our beds on which we wrote down addresses, intended destinations. If we came home safely, we disposed of the cards, and no one would have to know we’d even left the house. If we didn’t come home . . . it was unclear what then, given we’d already have met our unchangeable ends.