Donna’s dad had been on a train that derailed at Granville when she was a toddler. It had come off the tracks and hit a concrete post, bringing a chunk of road down onto one of the carriages. He’d been at the other end of the train, survived without a scratch, but she was sure she wouldn’t be so lucky. ‘I didn’t even remember,’ she said. ‘And then a few months back we were talking about irrational fears and I said I was scared of trains and he thought it was the funniest thing.’

‘Wow,’ Frannie said. ‘That’s freaky. Maybe you’re psychic or something.’

‘Yeah, that’s what my mum thinks.’ Donna shrugged. ‘I dunno. I think it was probably a big deal when I was little and I’ve just suppressed it.’

Fiona was barely listening, back to doodling on her notepad, but she smiled slightly at Donna’s self-evaluation.

‘Maybe.’ Frannie didn’t seem convinced.

‘It would be freaky, though, wouldn’t it? If it happened to me, after Dad being on that train? Like the plot of a movie or something.’ ‘Like that Dutch woman who survived the Boxing Day tsunami but then died in the one in Japan a few years ago?’ Glenn asked.

‘Yeah. Sort of.’ Donna’s eyes were wide with excitement. ‘Some nights I can’t sleep and I google all the disasters. None of those people had any idea what was going to happen.’

You never do, I thought, looking down at my half-empty cup.

Like I had last week, I thought of Lina, the two of us catching trains, just for something to do, just for somewhere to go. To get out of the house, away from the smell, from Jenny. Not going anywhere, really, but away, into the city. That was when we started making plans—talking about going overseas, backpacking, travelling, living in different countries. They were just dreams, at first, just a way to escape, like the postcards. And then they’d become real. At least, I thought they’d been real.

Bali sat on my bedside table and glared at me every night but I couldn’t put it away. I couldn’t reply to it, either, and I couldn’t call her. I didn’t know what to say, and when I rolled away from it to try to sleep it kept me awake for hours.

‘Trains are supposed to be safe, aren’t they?’ Louise asked uncertainly. ‘Nearly as safe as flying.’

‘I hate flying,’ Glenn muttered. ‘I know what the statistics say, but there’s no way you can convince me a four-hundred-tonne tin can is supposed to be in the sky.’

I stared at the floor. Flying. Falling. Dying.

Book your flight.