And I didn’t know. I didn’t know why in that moment, standing in the kitchen of the cat-piss house, I’d decided to go to bed and not do something worse. Something in me had fought it, and won. Somehow.

It scared me to think about it, to talk about it, in case I brought it back, but I knew I had to. For Lina.

For me.

Lina drove us to the beach. She’d taken Thursdays off until the wedding—not because of me, she said, when I asked. To plan. There was so much to plan, she said, but all she seemed to do was take me for drives and read trashy romance novels.

It was too cold to swim, but we ate hot chips and she told me it would be warmer in Bali and described all the cocktails she’d selected for the reception and it was hard to hear, and hard to respond. We didn’t talk about the postcard I’d sent, but sometimes I felt it there, too aware of how close I’d come to ruining everything. It was all hard, but the breeze skimmed my arms and when I went to take a breath it only hurt a little.

Sometimes I caught one—a stray Thought. A cluster of them, one after another. I became aware of the pointiness of the shower taps or the slipperiness of the laundry tiles or that there was a single step into the garage, and they’d tumble out, one by one, demanding my attention. I told Georgia and she suggested strategies, so simple I didn’t think they’d work. Breathing. Refocusing. Writing the Thoughts down, accepting them instead of fighting them, acknowledging them, letting them go. Different strategies. A toolkit, she called it. I didn’t think they’d work but they did, usually, eventually.

Lina called less, only once a day. I ran out of television, found a book to read, something pink with a woman dancing on the cover that I probably should have hated, but I didn’t. When I finished the book, telling myself I despised the cutesy happy ending but secretly liking it, I went for a walk, just around the block, getting used to the feeling of moving, getting used to the air, to breathing.

To being alive. Somehow. Still.

30 SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER

30

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER

Lina invited Mum and Dad for dinner. Jack too, but he had a birthday party, she told me.

I knew Lina had been talking to Mum, and not just about the wedding. Sometimes Lina encouraged me to ring her but I never felt ready. I hadn’t seen them in months, I realised, not since we’d had brunch in Newtown and I’d had to leave before I started crying in front of them. We weren’t close at the best of times, but it was harder now. So much had happened, and I didn’t know what to say.