It was how I ended up down by the water, looking back at the rows and rows of apartment buildings and wishing I lived in one of them, that I could sit in bed and look out at the harbour instead of at a brothel. I imagined all the people in those apartments, sleeping soundly.

Tom, sleeping.

My phone vibrated in my pocket—Nic asking if I’d got home all right, and I lied and told him I had. I found a bench and rolled a cigarette and smoked it, staring at the sky for so long it started to change colour, pulling my knees up to my chest, letting my eyes close and my head fall onto my knees. I was shivering, and I brought my knees in closer, tucked my hands into my hoodie and tried to make myself smaller, warmer, safer. I thought about falling asleep, about being found, blue and frozen, by an early-morning jogger, after half-a-dozen early-morning joggers had already gone by, politely ignoring me. About being snatched, dragged into a nearby laneway, too tired to fight. About having a heart attack, my body giving out.

So quiet, so still, so cold. Minutes, seconds, hours passed. I had no idea.

King Street was never this quiet, never this still.

Lina didn’t know how I slept with all the noise. She didn’t know that sometimes I didn’t, that I needed it to mark time, to keep me sane as I lay there staring at the ceiling for hours and hours.

So bloody quiet. It drives me crazy.

I pushed the thought away, buried it.

Jenny didn’t sleep much either. When I’d stayed at Lina’s, I’d always wake up in the middle of the night, hear the television still going or the clattering of her making a cup of tea.

You and Mum, honestly.

Lina said it all the time, rolled her eyes and told me we were alike. I always wanted to argue, to point out the differences, but I never knew how. Maybe she was right.

I took a breath and the ground seemed to tremble under me, and as I looked out at the water I wondered why it hadn’t leaped up and pulled me into its blackness, wondered how long it would be until it did.

11 TUESDAY, MAY

11

TUESDAY, MAY

‘I was so lucky.’

Geoff had tripped over his front step and cracked a bone in his hand. He had a cast on his wrist and his eyes were wide with adrenaline as he recounted his brush with death.

‘If I hadn’t put my hand out, that would have been my head, right into the corner of the bricks. Right in the temple. I was so lucky I wasn’t holding anything or playing on my phone or looking the other way.’

I frowned. I felt like I’d heard this before. More than once.