I shook my head, my eyes filling with tears. ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’

‘You brought it up.’ It wasn’t an accusation or a challenge, just a reminder. I had.

‘Did you talk to anyone afterwards?’

‘Lina did,’ I said. ‘Jenny—when she got better, I guess, I can’t remember—wanted her to see a shrink. She did. Only a couple of times.’

‘And you?’

‘No.’ I frowned. ‘I was okay. I was just worried about Lina.’

Everyone was so worried about Lina. Mum kept asking me how she was. The poor girl.

‘Lina had told me her mum was sick, but I didn’t understand what she meant. I didn’t wanted to. And then when I found her, I understood, and I felt like I’d let Lina down, I hadn’t listened to her.’ I looked away at the pastel watercolours on the wall. They were supposed to be soothing yet they were anything but.

‘Lina had no-one, after that. Jenny was still there but Lina didn’t want to be around her. She was so angry. And she had no-one.’

‘Except you.’

I nodded. ‘I looked after her. I tried to help her.’

‘And you? Who helped you?’

I shook my head, trying to figure out what she was getting at. Wishing—as I’d wished many times—that she’d just spit it out.

‘You went through this awful, horrible thing,’ Georgia continued. ‘Who helped you through it? Who did you talk to?’

‘No-one.’ My voice sounded funny. ‘I was okay. I didn’t need anyone. I coped.’

‘How?’ she asked. ‘How did you cope?’

I shrugged. ‘It didn’t affect me that much.’ But my tongue seemed to stumble over the words.

She sat forward. ‘Caitlin.’ Her voice was so soft and suddenly I wanted her to give me a hug. I wanted someone to give me a hug. I was fourteen again and I was sitting outside holding Lina as she cried and I just wanted someone to give me a hug. I was so scared. I’d been so scared. Scared that Jenny was going to die, scared of what would happen to Lina, to me. ‘I want you to think about this more. Not now, maybe. But let’s come back to it again soon. I want you to think about whether it’s true that it didn’t affect you. Can you do that?’

I looked at her. She was waiting, not tapping her notepad, not doing anything, just watching me, her face so kind, so patient. I wondered what she’d say if I did ask her for a hug, if she’d give me one. Instead, after a long, long time, I nodded. ‘Okay.’

When we finished, I cried in Lina’s car for a long, long time. My body doubled over and I fell into her lap and she rubbed my back, holding me, the way I’d once held her.