On the very top were some of the snaps I’d printed of Australia – just my favourites of me and Patrick. Freddie took a breath and instantly I knew she was about to say something I wouldn’t like. I could tell by how quiet she’d grown that she was building up to it.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I really am sorry I’ve not been a very good big sister. But now I’m moved in here, you can come and stay whenever you want. Literally, that alcove there should have a ‘Freddie’s Room’ sign hanging down.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Okay.’

‘Freddie-Bug?’

‘I feel sad that you and Patrick are breaking up. I liked him. He looked at you like you were the most important person in the world. I don’t think you should.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I took the photos from her hand and looked at them myself. There was no denying the size of my smile in most of them. ‘It was time for me to be an independent woman, Frou. A single gal.’

‘But why would you break up with somebody who loves you?’

‘I don’t think he loved me, piggy-poo. We both had fun together, that’s all.’

‘But why did the fun end? Why wouldn’t you want the fun to just keep going?’

I didn’t have an answer to that.

‘If somebody loved me, I wouldn’t dump them.’

‘We never said I love you, Fred.’

She sighed. ‘But would you have done? Eventually?’

I thought about the question and shuffled through the photos in my hand. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you love him?’

My head and my heart were saying different things. ‘I’m scared to,’ I admitted.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means …’ The realization dawned on me. ‘It means that yeah. I think I do.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Freddie Wiig, you are thirteen years old. What’s with the Spanish Inquisition? I didn’t think it was cool for your generation to pin all their hopes on a partner, anyway. I thought being sassy and single and carefree was cool! Come on!’

She shrugged me off. ‘Annie. I know I am younger than you, but I’m not an idiot.’

I nodded sagely. ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘You’re not.’

‘I think you’re making a mistake. I think you should be brave and tell him you love him before it’s too late.’

I don’t know what it was – the fact that it came from my baby sister, maybe – but suddenly my eyes welled with tears and my voice shook as I said, ‘I don’t think he wants me anymore. I pushed him away.’

She said, ‘Can’t you say sorry? I think being scared and being brave is what it’s all about, isn’t it?’

‘Woah.’ I laughed. ‘You did not just say that. How did you get so wise?’