A wave of sadness rumbled over me. Another one. I wanted to close my eyes and wish it away but I had been doing that for so long and I didn’t have the strength anymore. I let it come. ‘I’m sorry, Lina. I’m so sorry.’

She sighed. ‘It’s …’ But it wasn’t, and she couldn’t say it was. Instead, she said, ‘I’ll drive carefully, okay?’

It wasn’t that simple. None of it was. But she put me in the front seat and did up my seatbelt and put a pale blue elephant in my lap. ‘In case you get scared.’

I pressed its belly. ‘It’s a boy!’ a tinny animated voice squawked. My eyes got hot and if I could have cried, I would have.

‘Oh God,’ Lina said, getting into the driver’s seat and doing up her own seatbelt. ‘You better not do that all the way. Go for the head.’

I went to laugh, but it came out a whimper.

I’d never seen Lina so in control. She navigated traffic without a single wrong move, while I gripped the elephant so tight its trunk came loose, counted to five, ten, fifty, six hundred. It was awful and my chest hurt the whole time but she kept going and I didn’t leap out and run away, no matter how many times I wanted to.

I felt wrung out. The past—week? I couldn’t quite believe it had been a week since I saw those bandages on Frannie’s wrist, since everything went sideways. It felt like it had been a year, a minute, but it had hollowed me out, hollowed out the good and the bad, leaving just skin and bones.

Lina’s townhouse looked like every other townhouse. Pale grey render with dark tiles and a square of green lawn next to the driveway that looked like nobody had ever walked on it. But she was right: inside it was nice. I liked it—even the island bench and the giant oven and the butler’s pantry. It felt like a home, warm and safe.

She got me to have another shower. The steam rose up around me and made me nauseous. I felt hungover, even though I hadn’t had a drink in days. My mouth was dry and I let it fill up with hot water, desperately thirsty. When I came out she was on the phone, telling my mum everything was all right and she would keep her posted, and I wanted to cry, for the tenth time, for the thousandth time. This time with gratitude, with relief. And when I did, she held on to me, and then she made me dinner and set up a TV in the spare room and put my phone on a charger. All the things I should have been able to do for myself but seemed to have forgotten how.