I stumble on anyway. “They got to the Hotel okay but he was ill in the night. Drowsy and dizzy, then sick, and he got a rash on his skin . . . I think that’s what Mum said . . .” The phone call already seems hours ago. “And then he started having trouble with his breathing. Mum called a taxi to hospital. He fell unconscious on the way.”

Something is casting a dappled shadow across Becca’s face. The clock seems to get louder, nipping at the silence.

“What . . . caused it?” Becca asks at last.

“They’re running tests.”

Neither of us wants to say it. I don’t even want to think it.

“It couldn’t be,” Becca murmurs: the closest we can bring ourselves to facing the possibility. “It was only—”

“Exactly,” I cut her off, turning slightly away. “There’s no chance.” I stare into the kitchen, picturing myself at the counter tipping crushed tablets into a bottle. “Anyway, he’ll probably be okay. Surely he’ll be fine.” My legs buckle and I sink onto the floor, head between my knees.

“Even if he is, what if the tests show . . . ?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know what kind of tests they’ll do.”

“Shit.” Becca kicks the baseboard with her bare foot. “Oh, shit, shit, shit.”

“A coincidence,” I say, like a chant. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“I told you this was a bad idea.” She’s pacing now. I can see her feet going back and forth along the hall, chipped purple varnish on her toenails. “You had to talk me into it . . . crying, making me feel awful . . .”

I leap up. “I wasn’t faking that, Bec! Remember why we did it in the first place!”

She comes to a halt. Her shoulders droop and she presses a hand against her mouth.

“We did it for Mum,” I say in a tiny voice. “We only meant to shake him up.”

She nods, her head hanging. My eyes sting, my stomach feels scooped out.

“It might help them treat him,” Becca says.

“What?”

“If we tell them.”

Fear surges through me. I know she’s right. But the thought of confessing makes me want to run away and crawl under my bed.

“We could ring the hospital,” she says. “Do 1471 on the phone.”

I grab her arm. “What would we say?”

“I don’t know. That we think he might accidentally have taken some of”—she stalls as she looks into our bedroom, past her rumpled sleeping bag, toward the tub still sitting brazenly on the bedside table—“my pills?”

We both stare, breathing heavy and hard. I tell myself again that it can’t have been them, not a reaction so strong. Imagine if we confessed and it was nothing to do with us. Imagine what Mum would think of me, Auntie Rach, my teachers . . . Would I ever be allowed back to school? Would we go to prison?

“They won’t believe us.”