I try to see something ominous in the photo, dark shadows or figures in the trees or mysterious streaks of light, something to show that things were going to go very wrong for one of these girls, but there’s nothing. We might be the happiest kids in the world. Dirt smudges on our cheeks and twigs in our hair.

I dump the contents of the case onto the bed.

A photo of our graduating Grade Six class, ribbons from school athletics days, a certificate to say I’m allowed to write in ink. And then there are other things.

Plastic ‘gemstones’ imbued with magic powers. Silk flowers in colours that show which clan we belong to. A rubber rabbit from a farm animal set that travelled to earth from the moon. Yin’s mum used to tell her stories about the moon rabbit coming down to earth so we wrote it into our stories. The exercise book we scribbled our secret language in, and the written history of our lands, our spells.

At the bottom, the greatest treasure, the worn piece of paper that we’d spent hours on. We always fought over who got to keep it at their house. I had the stronger will, even then.

A map of our home kingdom and the rival kingdoms surrounding it. Drawn lovingly in gel pens and Derwent pencils.

Wingdonia.

Oh, so childish.

I haven’t seen it for years, and it’s surprisingly detailed. The mountain ranges come back, the waterfalls and valleys, villages and ports. Wingdonia was shaped like a boot; it kicked the neighbouring kingdom of Plentificent off into the Aerie Ocean.

Yin had the best ideas about the geography, because of the dozens of fantasy novels she’d read, but I had the best ideas about the people, the families and the politics.

There were four clans, each with their own back story and special powers.

Have I been homesick all these years for a place that doesn’t exist?

Yin and I were travelling warrior queens of the Opal clan, fairy immortals imbued with magic, but masquerading as flesh-and-blood humans. We’d built our world from scratch, painstakingly, over the years. Etching the lines deep and adding sprinkles of glitter. There’d been times when Wingdonia had seemed more real than reality.

But the kingdom crashed, war broke out and the game ended. It didn’t make it through the transition to high school, and neither did our friendship.

Everything goes back into the suitcase again, except for the map, which I fold up into a small rectangle and slide into the hidden compartment in my purse, wedging it up against a condom that Liv gave me.

I go to the mirror and look at my dry eyes, trying to see beyond myself, underneath to where the ten-year-old might still live, but there’s nothing there. I try to picture Yin standing behind my shoulder, but I can’t conjure her.