When his work schedule shifted for a fortnight he warned me he wouldn’t be around and put his number in my phone. I know you don’t want it, he said, but just in case, and I wanted to ask just in case what, but I didn’t. I went out with Nic or Holly, or both, and whoever else was around. Drank. Teased Nic about Alex. Talked about nothing. Sawyer’s was safe. Nic was safe again, too, the awkwardness drowned at the bottom of too many glasses of cheap wine.

Mum called and all she ever wanted to talk about was Lina and the wedding and I nodded along, counting the seconds until I could get off the phone. Sometimes I didn’t answer it at all.

Lina had booked plane tickets but all I could think about was how the plane would skid off the runway, or disappear in the middle of the Timor Sea or a hundred other things that could go wrong.

The days kept disappearing, the end getting closer and closer.

I went to group every Tuesday. Geoff moved. Frannie got more tests done. Louise deactivated Facebook, reactivated it to keep in touch with her grandparents, deactivated it. Glenn started writing a new book—I didn’t even listen when he told us what it was about. I was too tired, barely there.

I was still carrying around the postcard of Central Park, still meaning to send it, once I figured out what I wanted to say. Late at night, early in the morning, I lay in bed re-reading postcards from years ago. Finding out all over again that Lina’s mum had a new boyfriend: He seems really cool. He’s a builder, and just very chilled out. So different to that other arsehole. And that Matt was allergic to shellfish: Honestly, Cait. Only I would try to surprise the cutest guy I’ve ever met with a special birthday dinner and have him end up in Emergency! And that Seattle was home to the world’s first petrol station and about traditional penis sheathes from Vanuatu and that the Big Banana was built in 1964 and that the train stations in Tokyo all had their own jingles. Facts and stories and Lina telling me she loved me, over and over again, while I felt less and less like I had ever deserved it.