I retreat further into my own head which is bare and calm, as empty as the meat locker. When the tears come, they’re silent. They come without announcement. Plain salt water, trickling down my nose and running over my cheeks.

I think I have it in check but then the stream flows stronger, the water rises and threatens to flood. I have to push against it. Enough. Let out just enough.

‘Sorry,’ I say with my eyes still shut. The shivers take over my body, becoming bigger and bigger, like I’m having a fit. The more I tense my muscles the more they misbehave, my body has a mind of its own.

Chloe’s feet shuffle on the concrete. I will my body to stop convulsing, ashamed for her to see me like this, but her hand comes down on my shoulder, heavy and reassuring and warm and she keeps it there, squatting by my side until the tremors have run through me and away.

If my mother were truly psychic about my bad behaviour as she claims to be then she would be able to sense that Chloe and I are currently eating our body weight in trans-fat-laden French fries and gluten-soaked burger buns and almost one inch of definitely non-organic meat slathered in corn-syrup-laced ketchup. Jeremy has gone to the enormous alcohol-barn across the road and left us to feed the empty hole that artistic genius has created inside of us. I might officially be a muse.

The restaurant is super-heated and I’m wearing every bit of clothing I brought and some of Chloe’s as well, but I still can’t stop the shaking that springs from somewhere in the middle of my body.

Chloe pulls the patty out of her burger and eats it first, and then eats the salad and then eats the soggy bun and it’s a really gross way to eat. I try not to look at what she’s doing but the upside is that she doesn’t mention how shaky I am, and we pretend like nothing out of the ordinary happened. I like that about her.

‘I want to eat these fries for the rest of my life.’ I demonstrate by putting five in my mouth at once. ‘What else are you doing for the hols?’

‘Pretty sure it’s going to be nothing but homework and this project,’ Chloe replies. ‘Dad’s letting me use the spare room at his house.’

‘Will you send me updates?’

Chloe’s phone beeps. She checks it with one hand.

‘Is that your secret lover?’

‘Ha! Nice try.’ She puts her pillaged burger down and wipes her fingers. ‘Actually, it’s my friend Katie. She’s worried that she’s pregnant. I have to go over to hers and watch her pee on a stick tonight.’

Her face doesn’t even change expression as she says this. If one of my group got preggers, you’d better believe there’d be an instant world summit. The disturbing image of Sarah, Ally, Marley and I wearing those dorky baby carriers on our fronts flashes at me, uninvited. It’s horrific.