I didn’t do relationships, didn’t get attached, didn’t believe in fairytales or happily-ever-afters. I never had, but when Lina asked how long I was going to let him hang around, rolled her eyes like she knew this routine off by heart, I’d felt sick and scared and angry, clung on tighter.

I was dying, I wanted to say. I was dying and it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

You’re too much, he said when he ended it, and I knew what he meant and I hated that he knew it too, but for a brief, shining moment, I’d been relieved.

And then I was just devastated—strangely, awfully devastated, by this thing I’d never wanted anyway. My insomnia got worse. The Thoughts got worse. Everything got worse. I burst into tears in the middle of service three nights in a row, before finally taking one of the valium pills I’d been carrying around in my wallet and dropping an entire carton of wine behind the bar. It confirmed all my suspicions, the ones I’d had for years. No fairytales. No happily-ever-afters. Just pain. Just death.

Nic had dragged me into the staffroom and handed me a glass half full of vodka, his expression set in a perfect mix of concern and impatience as he watched me drink it. He’s an arse, Caitie, he said. But he’s Dex. Sorry, sweets.

He was right. Sawyer’s had just been written up in Gourmet and everyone knew it was because of Dex, and I was just a waitress, so I sucked it up, got on with it, got over it. Dug up the pamphlet I’d been given after the accident and went along to that support group in that beige community room, just to see. Just in case. Careful again, same as I’d always been.

A couple of weeks later Dex was offered a job opening a new gastropub in Bondi and then he was gone. Lenny, the owner of Sawyer’s, stopped saying hello to me when he came in, and every time I went into the prep kitchen conversations would trail off and I only stayed because Nic begged me to. I was dying anyway. It didn’t matter.

‘So, what happened?’ I asked, watching him smoke his cigarette. He had a new row of Japanese characters tattooed on the inside of his wrist and I wondered if he knew what they meant.

‘Usual story.’ He shrugged and looked past my shoulder. ‘It’s not the best time in the restaurant business. Bondi isn’t what it used to be. Joel has a coke problem. Pick one.’

‘I heard the food was pretty average, too.’

‘Funny.’

I smiled. ‘It is, kind of.’

He shook his head. ‘And how are you? Still Nic’s princess?’