‘I don’t want to mess up your life.’

‘My life is fine, Caitlin.’

There was more I wanted to say, but she grabbed the remote, made the faces on the screen move again. ‘Besides, I’m being selfish here too.’

I bit my lip. ‘How?’

She settled herself, head on my shoulder again. I let mine fall onto hers.

‘I want my best friend at my wedding.’

28 WEDNESDAY, AUGUST

28

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST

I cried a lot. Cried when I woke up and realised where I was, when I realised that I’d slept the whole night through, that I hadn’t had a single nightmare. Cried when I remembered I was supposed to go to work and Lina said she’d called Nic and told him I needed a couple of weeks off.

‘He said hi,’ she said to me. ‘He said to get better. Something about coming back to clean the fridge seals.’

I laughed then—between tears.

Cried over the pancakes Lina made me—my favourite, with lemon and brown sugar; cried on the drive to the doctor’s, holding on to my blue elephant and bracing myself at every intersection; cried in the waiting room, and when Lina offered to come in with me.

I cried right through the test the doctor gave me. When he asked if I’d been crying more than usual recently, I cried harder.

I cried when he told me I was severely depressed. ‘And probably quite anxious too,’ he added, his face as full of pity as it had been when I was ten and had to miss the school swimming carnival because I had chickenpox.

Afterwards, I sat in Lina’s car and cried for a long time, because then it was real, and I couldn’t pretend anymore, and all I wanted to do was keep pretending.

‘Where to?’ Lina asked, when I’d finished. She started the car and the vibration of the engine made my spine tingle. I hugged the elephant tighter.

‘It’s a boy!’

‘I don’t know.’

She chewed on her lip, looking through the windscreen, thinking.

‘Remember when you used to make me go on those stupid train trips with you?’

I frowned. ‘Yeah?’

‘I used to hate it, sometimes. I just wanted to stay home and watch TV and throw things at the walls to annoy Mum, but you’d insist.’

I blinked, wanting to correct her, remind her that she hated being at home, but I didn’t.

‘It took me ages to figure out what you were doing.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know if I ever thanked you.’

I looked at my hands.

‘You were there for me when everything was shitty, Cait. You gave me hope when I thought everything would be terrible forever.’

The elephant. My fingernails, jagged and bare. My eyes filled with tears. Again.

‘I have an idea,’ she said, after a long time.

‘What?’ My voice cracked, thick with phlegm.