‘What is this?’

‘A meat locker.’

‘A whatsy?’ A chill races through me, above and beyond the chill already in the air.

‘You know, a really big fridge. They could have kept meat here, or maybe it was cheese or veggies. Who knows.’

Chloe’s voice echoes slightly. She lays down the bags she’s been carrying.

Rows and rows of ghostly pig corpses fill my mind, sides of cow, dead flesh laid out and waiting to be eaten. It’s airless in here, cloying. Something rises up inside me.

‘Are you alright? You don’t get claustrophobic, do you?’ Chloe looks concerned.

‘No, I’m fine.’ I pull on the door handle with the least amount of urgency possible, but I do a bad job of it. Eventually I figure out I have to pull the lever towards me. Air whooshes into the box, the locker, whatever. I stick my head into the gap, breathe in.

‘You and Jeremy aren’t Australia’s first daddy-daughter serial killing team, are you?’

I try to joke but she sees straight through me.

‘We’ll try and be in here as little as possible. Let me show you where to get dressed.’ She herds me out, using the same voice you would on a doddery old person or a cat cowering under a car. ‘It’s going to take me a while to set up.’

A crow caws somewhere nearby as I let myself back into the meat locker. Now that my eyes can cope I see that it’s just a freestanding metal box in a bigger warehouse space, nothing more sinister than that.

We’d discussed how I was supposed to look in the shot, but I’d kind of run with my ideas a bit. I tried to keep my mind on Chloe’s folio and all the visual references she’d collected, I really thought carefully about it.

Chloe stops what she’s doing to look, a set of leads in her hands, gaffer tape bangles around her wrists. I stand, one bare numb foot on top of the other, horribly, unfamiliarly awkward.

‘It’s good,’ she says after a few seconds.

‘Really?’

A cold draft blows up the see-through white dress I pinched from Mum’s wardrobe. I’ve got my floral bathers on underneath, and I’ve blanked out my face with white powder, blending blue eye shadow here and there for that half-dead look. Most of my effort has gone into my hair, which I’d started at home, tangling and plaiting bits of it up, pinning it into place. On top is the crown that took me a week to make. It’s a crown fit for a travelling Opal warrior queen, made from twigs and feathers and plastic magical stones from my secret suitcase. A relic from Wingdonia, a re-creation of the fantasy.

No one but me needs to know what it means, not even Chloe.