‘Anyway,’ I said, as I finished redoing my bun. I wasn’t sure if my voice was shaking or if it was just my hands. ‘I can’t even keep a houseplant alive, so I probably fail on the nurturing, but I’m pretty trustworthy, so you’re safe with me.’

Our eyes met, held for a long time.

‘That’s good to know,’ he said, finally.

I smiled, feeling both much too awkward and much too comfortable.

13 TUESDAY, MAY

13

TUESDAY, MAY

‘Sometimes I don’t want to know,’ Frannie said. ‘Sometimes I think it would be easier not to. Just let it grow and grow until it’s so big there’s no point doing anything.’

She looked different, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Her eyes were wider and her mouth looked smaller, lips dry and cracked. ‘I don’t want my kids to remember me being sick for years and having chemo and losing my hair. I don’t want that to be the thing they talk about when they talk about their childhoods. I want them to remember us being happy and having fun.’

My mum’s sick.

We’d been neighbours for a while then but were only starting to become friends. It was the school holidays and she’d wanted to come to my house for a change. She didn’t want to be at home, and when I asked why that was what she said.

What’s wrong with her?

Don’t know.

She was lying on my bed and looking out the window. It was before the postcards. Before the train. Before everything. I didn’t know what I wanted to be then either. Not a dancer.

She just gets weird sometimes. It’s why my dad left.

Is she going to die?

I’d said it mostly as a joke, but Lina took a long time to answer. No, she said at last, sitting up, flicking her fingers through her hair. Not sick like that, don’t worry. She’d looked at me, annoyed, frustrated, like there was something I wasn’t getting.

‘I was eleven weeks pregnant with Ollie and I found a lump,’ Frannie said finally. ‘You know, in my breast.’

I sat forward. I’d heard this before too, but her voice was tighter, more urgent.

‘I went and got it tested. Not at first—at first I thought I was imagining it, that it was just one of those pregnancy things, like your feet getting bigger. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I went and got it checked out.’

She looked at her hands. Her fingernails were a perfect shade of Cadbury purple, just starting to chip.

‘They couldn’t find it. They did everything. An ultrasound. A mammogram. All clear.’