This was the way it was going to end. This was always the way it was going to end, the way it was supposed to be. Still, my chest was so tight and there was a coldness creeping up my neck, over my face, an invisible hand cutting off the blood flow.

I wasn’t ready.

I tried to take a breath but my throat was closed, a roaring in my ears.

Can you tell me what happened?

I couldn’t. I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d been looking out the window, at the houses, rows of houses, imagining the same rows of houses in a city on the other side of the world.

I hadn’t been ready and it had happened anyway, nearly happened. That was close.

I was paying attention now. Always. Vigilant. Paying attention to everything, to all the things that could go wrong, waiting for it. But I wasn’t ready anymore.

If I were you, I’d be buying a lottery ticket tomorrow, that’s for sure.

The footsteps faded, moved further and further away.

I blinked, looked around.

Whoever had been there was gone. I was alone.

I turned, saw the back of a figure heading towards Chippendale, barely a shadow in a faint cloud of cigarette smoke.

The roaring stopped, and all I could hear was my own pulse, heart thumping against my ribs.

I wondered when he’d changed his mind.

I wondered if he’d been there at all.

The silence pressed into me, suffocating and hot, and the pounding in my chest continued for so long I thought I was going to die.

I wasn’t ready. All this time I’d thought I was ready but I wasn’t ready at all.

16 WEDNESDAY, JUNE

16

WEDNESDAY, JUNE

‘Wait,’ Holly said, leaning in and picking up a piece of cold garlic bread. We’d just finished and she’d been trying to convince me to go to the casino, and for some reason I’d said no, and when she’d asked why, for some reason I’d told her what had happened. And then regretted it instantly. Her eyes were too wide, her expression too gleeful. ‘He kissed you?’

‘Shh,’ I whispered, glancing at the door. ‘I don’t even know why I told you.’

So wide. So gleeful. While I just felt awful.

He hadn’t come in since. He hadn’t called or messaged, and nobody else seemed to have noticed. It was as though I’d made him up in my head and he’d never really existed at all, and now he’d disappeared into a cloud of smoke, like the figure last night.