Soon I was in the back of a car, behind Dan and Lachlan, because whether I liked it or not – and for the record, I didn’t – we were really doing this, the old me, the old them, presumably abandoned in the dark dream of this year – but not yet, not yet. These were significant new vistas! I had to assume this, because they were being blocked by Dan and Lachlan being conspicuously handsy in the front seats, Lachlan driving the car and Dan reaching over to angelically fix his hair. We drove mellow streets, then hectic highways, then mellow streets again, listening to a podcast on the tree of evolution, an image we could leave behind us as we sped on through: humans hadn’t just evolved by passing down our genes, but by passing down the genes of things with which we shared our bodies. The human genome is, for instance, eight per cent virus, and little shreds are carried over when our selves are copied.

To the hatchback’s right, the cold ocean, its uncompliant hands. We yanked left from the water and pulled towards the house, a few gravel-drivewayed streets back from the beach itself.

There was just one bedroom and, by the time I went in, Lachlan was already tucked in bed, with all his clothes on. He looked so cute and demonstrative that nobody could fight his claim, even knowing he was presumably still wearing his shoes. Of course Dan, who ‘required’ a bedroom, had put him up to this, but you had to admire the terminator ruthlessness of weaponising Lachlan for the purpose of obtaining, for himself, the ideal bed.

Under the house, as well as the bunk room, a rumpus room heavy with the tang of shed-grade chlorine. Vivian’s parents must have been kind as well as wealthy, because they’d left the hot tub on, vinyl-covered, simmering.

I moved past it and into the bunk room, touching all the beds.

‘I’ll find the linen,’ said a voice behind me. ‘I’ll make the beds.’

‘No, I’ll find the linen,’ another voice said. ‘I’ll make the beds.’

It was Vivian, and he stepped carefully into the bunk room past Chris L, who wore what looked like pyjamas, striped and comfortable, beneath a thin arrangement of grey tentacly fabric, possibly one shawl torn philosophically into many.

‘Okay, you guys find the linen,’ I said. ‘You guys make the beds.’

I clapped twice and went upstairs; and to my great surprise, Chris L clapped his own hands, a quick echo of mine, and followed me up there, a flappy tethered presence.

In the kitchen, my backpack; I had contributed bread. ‘Bread and cheese,’ said Chris L, ‘I’m looking forward to bread and cheese.’ He played with the nouns like they were new words to him, which was the same vibe that I was feeling – so grown-up, bread and cheese – but also troubling, because I had not brought any cheese.