I took a drag. So hard I immediately felt sick. ‘Thanks.’

He held the lighter out and I reached for it, letting his hand wrap around mine as I did. His fingers were warm from being in his pockets and mine shivered against them, so cold they burned.

‘Cait …’

‘Don’t.’ I didn’t mean to say it, didn’t mean to pull away.

His eyes widened, face frozen in confusion, hand hanging in mid-air. ‘Sorry.’

I looked down. ‘It’s okay.’

But it wasn’t. All I could see were Frannie’s wide, hollow eyes and her wrists; all I could smell was vomit and death.

Something was wrong. Something else. Not just with Frannie—with everything. Something had happened right in front of me and I didn’t understand it yet but I could feel it.

You’re too much.

It’s why my dad left.

Something was wrong with me. Something awful. Terrible. Incurable. Fatal.

My stomach tightened, my spine, my jaw. I tried to swallow—all of it, down. Careful. But there was no careful. There was just a beige room full of death and it wasn’t helping and I didn’t know what possibly could. Still, I forced it down, forced a smile onto my face, forced my eyes up.

Tom looked so different, his expression one I’d never seen. Wrong. He looked away, past me, at the door I’d just come out. Stared at it for a long time. I almost expected it to open and someone to emerge. Geoff. Frannie. Abraham, in his standard-issue polo, holding his standard-issue clipboard. Something crept up my spine. Something that had been there since the moment I’d heard his voice but which I hadn’t recognised. I went to say something but he spoke first.

‘What’s going on, Cait?’

Something awful. Terrible.

I put my cigarette in my mouth, my hand trembling so much I nearly missed, caught it with my lip, inhaled. The paper crackled as it burned.

Too much.

I’m sick.

‘Caitlin,’ he sighed. Sad. ‘Please.’

I shook my head, pretending not to understand, begging him to stop.

He made a sound, a low rumble. It shook my bones. ‘What are you doing? What is this place?’ Looked at the door again.

A tiny earthquake. Somewhere close. Right underneath our feet. He hadn’t even noticed, or maybe he had.

‘I called you.’

The flashing phone. A tsunami. An earthquake, and then a tsunami. If one didn’t kill us, the other would. ‘You did?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How come?’ Trying to pretend I didn’t know.

He sighed; guilty, tired, something else. ‘I wanted to know what you were doing in there.’ He sounded apologetic. Nervous. The penny dropped, took my stomach with it.