I had a giant, multi-day, battery-busting phone spree that was aimed at finding Vivian on any social media, including once-popular but now-mothballed photo sharing websites and pre-smartphone hook-up sites that didn’t work unless you enabled pop-ups. There are more things on heaven and earth, there are other apps than these, and in none of them did there exist the phenomenon known as Vivian, a collection of animals, vegetables, minerals and mysteries.

I liked him, I realised. And it was a full-on thing. Meaning it was an ambivalent thing, because ambivalence was realistic; the doubting only made it more delicious and complex, the same way that Vegemite had to be spread very thin or you realised it was salty and unreasonable.

Maaaate. I liked him because Chris L had hooked up with him, and because he had quickly, lazily and in the end disposably demonstrated a tiny bit of interest in yours truly. Maybe these were my kinks, finally my kinks: things that belonged to other people and were indifferent to me. I thought of his smile as sphinxlike, but the truth was his smile was hardly secretive, just pretty. Still, it was sphinxlike, I insisted to myself. It was sandy and rugged. It was windswept and revered.

I wouldn’t be the first person who chucked themselves against the probability wall not because they necessarily wanted to go through it, but because they liked the feeling of their skin hitting the bricks. Why couldn’t I like a pet rock, or a plant with the wings of a vulture? Why couldn’t I like one of those seemingly single-minded slimes that’s actually trillions of independent creatures, sludging and devouring in superficial concert? It didn’t matter. I didn’t like them; I liked this.

I almost called Dan one night when I knew he was at Lachlan’s to tell him the good news – finding my kink, my truth – but stopped when I realised that Vivian might be over there, again proving that he was a bad idea.

This part was so unnerving that when Dan came home from his parents’ on Christmas night, laden with grain salads and melty chocolate mints, he found me curled up on my mattress in front of the courtyard door, staring at a blank phone screen.

‘Dan,’ I said, ‘am I real?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, have you seen what’s happening on the street?’

I turned over. ‘What?’ I said.

‘Go out and see,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ I said, and climbed off the mattress, padded down the hallway and opened the front door to the silent Christmas street. ‘Dan,’ I called, ‘there’s nothing on the street.’

‘And it’s still so much more interesting than whatever’s happening here. Get up, have a shower, come downstairs and eat. I really can’t believe I have to say this.’