‘Yes I did. And you’re right, she is my friend.’ I polish off a bar in two bites and start on another. I should have asked Chloe if she needed help over the school holidays, if there’s anything else I could do. I should have made that much more clear when she and Jeremy dropped me off.

‘You look pretty with your hair like that,’ Mum says.

I touch my head, feeling the pointy crown atop my skull, which is where it’s been the whole time we drove home and ate Maccas. I’d forgotten I was wearing it. Yin and I never told our parents, never told any grown-ups, about Wingdonia. I might have mentioned it to Liv, but that’s it.

‘How come Dad’s not well?’

Mum sighs. ‘This has been hard on him. The police coming here really upset him. Not that he’ll say so out loud. We found out that the McIlwraiths had their house searched too.’

My chewing halts. Sarah didn’t say a word.

‘God, this whole thing. It’s not healthy for you girls, is it?’ Mum rubs her temples as if she’s also brewing a headache. ‘Every man you know is a potential suspect. How are you going to grow up to like them?’

‘I like them just fine,’ I say, without even knowing if it’s true. Maybe it is. Marcel keeps messaging me, even though I’ve hardly been encouraging. I might have spoken too eagerly, because Mum’s eyebrows are now saying: don’t like them too much.

‘Are you sure you’re all right though, love?’ Mum reaches out and strokes my arm. ‘Do you want to speak to anyone about all this?’

I brush her aside. I don’t want her to start on one of her ‘you’ll feel better if you talk about it and you know you can tell me anything, anything at all’ spiels.

‘Should I go upstairs and see if Dad needs anything?’

‘I think he wants to be on his own,’ says Mum, and I’m relieved.

DAY 43

Something bizarre happens as I’m standing on the Mitchells’ doorstep. I shrink, like Alice after drinking from the bottle, and then I’m twelve years old and my hair is long and snarled and my boobs have just come in. I’m allowed to spend all afternoon and evening at Yin’s house and all I want to do is watch dance tutorials on YouTube. All Yin wants to do is read, hold her guinea pigs and tell me about orchestra camp, boring boring. There’s smoke in the air from the bushfires and we are already splitting apart without really knowing it yet, the way tectonic plates move away from each other minutely, breaking up continents.

The door opens a crack, Chunjuan looks through and the spell is broken.