I say yes, because maybe I can ride it out. Because if I’m being real, I don’t want to go back to Morrison, I just don’t want to stay at Balmoral either.

Much later, when I’m going through my school diary to see if I have anything due tomorrow, I find the envelope Ms Nouri gave me tucked into the cover. Inside is a photocopy of an interview with Bill Henson, titled ‘I’m comfortable with the fact my pictures disturb people’.

Ms Nouri might not have stood up to Mrs Christie, but her message is clear.

I read the interview slowly and marvel at how focussed Henson stays on his work, how little he cares about what people say. How does a person grow an iron skin like that? How do you feel that amount of certainty? Do you have to be a middle-aged white man to feel that way?

I usually don’t care too much about other people’s opinions. If they want to think my body is too big, they can. If they find me too quiet in class, whatever. But this is different. The photo means too much to me.

I showed too much of myself, and now, to my surprise, it turns out I do care what other people think.

NATALIA

DAY 59

Dad picks me up from outside the gym where Marley and I have been taking the class that has you dancing along having a good old time and then suddenly dropping to the floor to do push-ups and crunches until you want to hurl all over your mesh-panel leggings.

‘Does Marley need a lift?’ Dad cranes his head.

‘Nah, she likes to walk. It’s barely a block.’

‘We should take her…’

‘Dad! We’re not babies anymore.’

That shuts him up, but in actual fact I am personally relieved that I don’t have to walk the narrow streets in the dark. Marley, on the other hand, loves this time of night.

‘Good workout, honey?’

I fiddle with the aircon, directing the jets right onto my sweaty face. My body has been full of adrenaline and secrets since I went to that pervert Pulpitt’s house, and then that got mixed into a sludge with anger at Petra, but now stomach-crunching until my abs burned has somehow restored my feeling of reality, of being back in my body instead of in a nightmare.

‘I had a crap day so I suppose it helped.’

‘Crap day? Anything I need to know about?’

‘I’ll tell you at home, I just want to flop for a second.’

I put the radio on loud, Dad turns it down a notch, and we race down the slippery dip of Windermere Avenue, flanked by the biggest, richest, oldest mansions, the kind that have tennis courts and swimming pools and British-sounding house names. I wonder what crimes have happened behind the closed doors of these houses that no one knows about.