When we get home Dad makes me sit at the breakfast bar and pick coriander leaves off the stalks, which definitely counts as child labour.

The benches are littered with gaping spice packets and sticky spoons, the food processor is out and awful ancient Bob Dylan is on the sound system and there are one-and-a-half empty wine bottles and I realise that Dad shouldn’t have been driving the car. Mum is going to crack it when she sees the mess and Faith doesn’t come again until Thursday.

Dad pours himself another glass. He puts rice on to boil and commences chop chop chopping a giant pile of vegetables. Steam gathers around us and fogs up the back windows.

‘You in the mood yet to tell me about your day?’

I shift on my stool, nearly kicking Dylan Thomas, who wends his way around my legs.

‘What do you think about censorship, Dad?’

‘You’ll have to be more precise, honey.’

‘Censorship of art.’ I scroll on my phone for pics of Chloe’s art piece, which I also think of as mine. ‘Remember that art project I helped my friend with at the beginning of the holidays?’

He nods, even though he has no idea. Mum keeps track of me and my schedule, but he has only the faintest idea on any given day. I show him the screen.

‘Is that you, Tal?’

He reaches across the bench and grabs my phone with his greasy cooking hands.

‘I don’t like seeing you like that. Where were you? Why would you agree to that?’

I grab my phone back and wipe it on my top.

‘Forget it’s me, Dad. God, can you just try and be normal for a second? Chloe is trying to make a point about the portrayal of young women or something. And then this dweeb complained about Chloe’s photo, saying she was offended or whatever, and Mrs Christie banned it from the exhibition.’

Even just talking about it makes my hackles rise. I pretend not to feel it most of the time, but Balmoral is a stifling, suffocating blanket, as bad as the boarding school in Picnic at Hanging Rock. It’s not only that Petra thinks she’s got the moral high ground, but also that the school agrees with her, that they don’t care about the things that matter to us.

When something real and raw like Chloe’s photo comes along, they push it away. As if we don’t know what bad people can do.

‘Is that what happened?’

‘Chloe worked so hard on this for her major art project, and so did I, and it was only up for less than a day before one person—one person!—complained, and they’ve taken it out of the exhibition. And Chloe isn’t eligible for the art prize now, which is totally unfair and she deserved to win—’

‘I’ll call Gary after dinner—’ starts Dad.

‘NO.’