Mum is silent while Liv swirls an old sheet around me and fastens it with a butterfly clip but I can see her starting to twitch when Liv runs an extension cord from the kitchen and plugs her clippers in. I sit at the table and push aside the thick orange envelopes they’ve been sending my schoolwork in, which I have been studiously ignoring.

Liv buzzes the clippers once, twice, to check they’re working properly and both times the sound makes me jump.

‘You know you can’t change your mind once she starts, darling?’ Mum says.

It’s early in the morning and I’m grumpy and my eyeballs are dry and what I need to do is something extreme.

‘You are aware that hair grows back, aren’t you, Mother?’

‘There’s no need to be snide!’ she says in an overly wounded tone but then Dad swaps out her carrot juice for a steaming cup of coffee and it miraculously shuts her up.

Without further ado, Liv gathers my hair into a ponytail, the whole honey-blonde enviable lot that everyone is always complimenting me on including uninvited strangers, and shears it off with Mum’s sewing scissors.

‘Ta-da!’ She holds it up and blonde wisps drift over the parquetry floor.

Mum yelps as if her arm has been cut off and Dad moves in to cuddle her. They’ve been unusually lovey-dovey the last few days and it has been the cause of much retching between Liv and I.

I have zero regrets when I look at the blonde clump in Liv’s hand. I am colourless, expressionless, drained of spark or fire or anything normal.

‘Your beautiful hair,’ Mum whimpers from the kitchen.

‘Enough of that patriarchal crap!’ I say loudly. ‘You make me sound like Jo in Little Women.’

‘YOUR ONE BEAUTY!’ Liv says melodramatically as she starts buzzing. The clippers bite at my nape and they are oh so hungry. Mum’s sneakers pad out of the room.

I fix my eyes on the back window, focussing on our wattle tree, which is starting to bloom, and the grey sky that might bring a storm big enough to cancel the memorial service and strand our car on flooded streets so it’s a pity but we won’t make it after all.

Buzz buzz buzz. The blade is firm against my skin. I imagine harvesters driving over fields of wheat leaving clean stubble in their wake.

‘Do you want to practise your speech?’ Liv asks over the drone.

I don’t dare shake my head. ‘No. I got it.’

I try to forget the fact that my sometimes-unreliable sister is wielding a blade centimetres and in some cases millimetres away from so many things I need, like ears, eyes, scalp. She mows behind my ears, temples, right over the top, around my crown.