Especially when it was hard. I said it again to Lina and she nodded.

‘I’m not better. Not all the way,’ I added, watching a bird fly into a tree and then land, rest. Thought about what would happen if the branch broke. Counted down from ten and let it pass. ‘But I don’t know if I ever will be, if I don’t do this.’

Too quiet. Too still. Too much time to think.

‘Can you call me?’ She put down the hoodie. ‘Every few days at least?’

I laughed. ‘I’ll call you every day,’ I said. ‘And I’ve got Thursdays off, so we can still practise after Georgia’s.’

Thursdays and Tuesdays off. Every second Sunday. I hadn’t asked for Tuesdays, but Nic had assumed.

I was scared. The second Matt drove away I wished I’d gone with him, even though he drove like a demon and I’d spent the entire trip over gripping the dash. I’d been alone in Lina’s house for whole days but being alone in the cat-piss house for even one minute made me breathe harder. It did smell. It smelled really bad, and it was noisy and the windows shook every time a bus rolled past, but at least my mattress was dry and Lina had bought me a mattress protector as a welcome home present. I put it on, and a sheet, unpacked all my clothes, walked to the supermarket and bought bread and milk and butter and cheese and tobacco. My chest thrummed as I walked down King Street, the familiar stirrings at the corners of my mind, chill in my bones. I was starting back at Sawyer’s the next day and the sun was setting and I didn’t know what to do, where to go. How.

Until I did.

‘Hi.’ I looked around at the faces, all a little bit beige. ‘I’m Caitlin. I’m twenty-eight and I’m a waitress.’ I hesitated. ‘I think.’

‘Welcome, Caitlin,’ a nurse called Evelyn said.

She was new, but at first it felt like nothing else had changed. Beige chairs arranged in a circle, on beige lino. Maybe the circle was neater than I remembered—Evelyn still cared—but the coffee was still the same beige mud served in beige cups, and the crack in the wall was exactly the same size as it always had been.

I didn’t know what I was doing there, what I was looking for.

‘Hello, everyone, I’m Carlos. It’s been two weeks since my last confession. I had a cold last week.’

It was so familiar it hurt, right in my heart.