I write more than I usually do. I say thank you for thinking of me and sorry it took me so long to reply and how shit and strange my day was. I ask her if she’s coming to the memorial service and tell her that I’m not sure if I will be able to get any words out. I say sorry for fighting with her the other day and say I wasn’t myself.

I write so much in this one text I don’t know who I am anymore and for sure she’s going to wonder too.

CHLOE

DAY 68

My hands shake with nerves, but I let the edge of the scalpel bite into the paper and then drag it downwards. Angling the blade this way and that, I carefully cut Natalia’s body out of Someone’s Watching. It’s painstaking work, trying to get close to every line and detail. A few times I flinch, thinking I’ve cut off her finger or a curl of hair, but my blade stays true.

I’ve taken over the entire lounge room floor.

I lift paper Natalia out of the scene, exhaling with relief, and lay her down on a fresh canvas prepped with white gesso. An old nail-polish brush is exactly the right size to carefully apply glue to her back and stick her down in her new home.

I turn over the original photo and paste white construction paper over the hole. I pick off half of my collaged frame, leaving the remnants to speak louder.

After that awful conversation in Ms Nouri’s office I thought I would give up art for good. But then Yin’s body was found and it was like the earth fell out from under everyone. Death is the worst kind of silence, and I don’t want to be silent.

I can’t explain it, but my gut tells me this is the right thing to do.

The result is two companion artworks with identical dimensions.

One an empty room with a white silhouette of a missing person at the centre. The other a large white expanse interrupted only by the black-and-white image of a floating girl.

As if she knows I was thinking about her, my phone vibrates, and it’s Natalia. She only messaged me back yesterday, after a week’s silence, so I wasn’t expecting a call this soon. I turn down my music before I answer.

‘You sound surprised,’ she says.

‘No, not surprised.’ I am surprised.

‘Okay, nervous then. Like you don’t know what to say to me.’

If I thought tragedy was going to bring a new, softer Natalia, I was wrong. ‘How about pleased? Pleased you called me.’

I hear her snort.

‘No, it’s weird. I’m the one being weird,’ she says. ‘I woke up this morning and realised I’d sent you an essay yesterday.’