‘I won’t. You must have been worried to send that around.’

She nods, her eyes wide. ‘I was so scared. I just wanted to do something useful.’

NATALIA

DAY 67

Every bone in my body is screaming get away get away get away but somehow Mum and I pile in the car and follow Stephen and Chunjuan’s champagne-coloured Audi down the highway and into an area of the city I’ve never seen before.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ says Mum as we park our car and my heart goes pitter-pat or more like BANG BASH BANG and I think I’ve figured out how cows feel before they get led to the big chopper.

‘You don’t either,’ I say back, but neither of us stops moving as we get out, put our jackets on and join the Mitchells at their car because we were asked to do this and it wasn’t our family that lost a member and there are some things you can’t say no to.

The BBQs and wooden tables that I saw on the news and in the papers are everywhere around us. The scrubby trees too, the dodgy public toilets and the trail signs.

Even though it’s not that cold today, Albert and Nelson have so many layers on they look like round puff balls on sticks, robins before the winter. Stephen hands them knobbly supermarket bags and they heft them onto their shoulders with seriousness. They give me a solemn squeeze each, even though it’s been years since they’ve seen me.

We all look so grim we could be in one of those Polish arthouse movies Nanna used to watch before she got dementia and switched to game shows.

Chunjuan holds out her hand and I take it. Her face is unmovable, her hand firm and strong.

We march off into the park, followed by Albert and Nelson. I look behind and realise that it’s just us; by some prior arrangement or discussion Stephen and Mum are waiting with the cars. We walk along a green corridor and into a piece of nothing bush, the most desolate place you’ve ever seen.

A police officer shows us a barely-there track, and we shuffle through waist-high grass until we’re in a clearing of sorts.

My legs don’t want to move, but I drag each foot forwards.

‘I’ll show you what to do, it’s not difficult,’ reassures Chunjuan as we reach the edge of a taped-off area.

My head spins, everything goes black for the longest blink of an eye, there are stars, and then the clouds and the swaying grass right themselves.

This is where Yin’s body was found.