‘I seconded it,’ Maxie said. ‘I’d had enough of school food. I was desperate for a pizza.’

They decided to go to Carlton, the city’s Italian quarter. They pooled their pocket money and bought two pizzas to share. Afterwards, they went strolling up and down Lygon Street. It was a hot night. Young – and handsome – Italian boys were doing laps in their cars. They were three seventeen-year-olds, giddy with freedom, alone in the city.

‘Jeannie asked us to dare her to do something,’ Olivia said. ‘She was in a wild kind of mood. Like she was fizzing with electricity. I dared her to ask at a café for a free slice of pizza. She asked for three, and got them. Then she dared us to ask her to do something more exciting. Something dramatic.’

‘But before we could think of anything, she ran off from us,’ Maxie said.

Jeannie had spotted a delivery van parked outside one of the pizza restaurants. The engine was still running. The driver’s door was open. She got in and she took off.

‘She only had her learner’s permit,’ Olivia said.

‘And this was in the middle of Melbourne,’ Maxie said. ‘On a Saturday night. It was so busy.’

‘And she started driving around the block, like the Italian boys were doing. Twice. Each time she honked the horn and waved at us. We were so shocked. We kept calling to her to stop it, to come back. And then the driver came out and he was —’

‘Shocked and angry. And he said, “Where’s my van?” And we said, “Our friend’s taken it, don’t worry, she’ll bring it back.”’

‘And he said, “But what about my little brother?”’

‘The next time she drove past we saw him,’ Maxie said. ‘A kid aged about nine in the passenger seat. He looked terrified, or maybe he was excited. It happened too fast to be able to tell. Because she was so busy waving and shouting out to us that she didn’t see the car pull out in front of her.’

‘And she crashed into it.’

Eliza’s eyes were huge in her pale face. ‘Was he killed?’

Olivia shook her head. ‘He wasn’t even injured. Somehow, miraculously, neither of them were. But the car was a write-off.’

The police were called. An ambulance. The boy was in tears. The driver and the owner of the restaurant, his cousin, were enraged. Threatening Jeannie, shouting at her. She was shouting back at them. Then the police arrested her.

‘Arrested her?’

‘She’d stolen a van, Eliza. They thought she was drunk or on drugs.’