‘Gary—not too good,’ Dad says and continues unevenly through the house. He’s not looking crash hot himself. He stopped drinking for years, but now he’s back on it, and I don’t know what that means.

After he’s gone upstairs I do a full circuit, checking the locks on all the doors and windows.

DAY 7

The house feels empty when Liv finally leaves on Saturday afternoon. She’s good at leaving spaces emptier than they were. The pantry hangs open, its contents ravaged, and there are dirty dishes piled up in the sink that no one can be bothered putting in the dishwasher.

Dad is playing golf, leaving Mum bored and desperate to interact, so I duck upstairs, saying I’ve got homework to do. It’s not a lie, I do have homework, but I’ve got no intention of doing it.

I lock my bedroom door and light my candles. My phone is going off, everyone trying to get me to say what we’re doing tonight. I put it on silent. The smell of liquefying wax relaxes me.

Standing on tiptoes, I can barely reach the storage shelf at the top of my wardrobe. A garbage bag of shoes I’ve grown out of falls first. My fingers latch onto a handle.

The green leather suitcase is a time machine.

I almost threw it out when I moved from my old bedroom to this one, but something made me keep it. I slide both clasps to the side, and the case springs open.

There’s a lot of junk inside, photos and badges and broken necklaces, my old school diary and bits of paper that contain a forgotten world. Forgotten people. Notes passed in class, invitations to birthday parties.

Here’s a photo of me and Yin, in matching t-shirts with our arms linked, goofy grins. Ten years old, major dorks and joined at the hip, as we had been every year of Junior School. Yin’s thick black hair kicks up at the ends and I’m in the first year of braces. We’re on a summer camping trip with the Mitchells; I remember Yin still wasn’t sure about her new stepdad.

It hurts to see her baby face. All the breath leaves my body.

You know who I could always rely on to tell me the truth, to warn me before I went too far? Yin.

She’d tell me to stop eating cupcakes or I’d spew, she’d turn the volume down before I got in trouble, yelled at me to stop climbing that tree, told me when I needed to apologise.