‘But looking back now, I’m like, that’s so stupid, because of course I was gonna leave eventually. Right? I think – I think a lot of, like, fear, and sadness, and stuff comes from thinking things that won’t last forever are gonna last forever. Good things and bad things.’

She was so quiet that I worried I’d imagined her ever being there.

‘That’s not dumb,’ I said.

June shrugged. ‘Maybe less dumb and more selfish.’

‘Why?’

‘Because things don’t exist just so we can be there to look at them while they do. You know, like … Just because you love something doesn’t mean it can’t go on without you.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I guess.’

‘And then, once I’d actually gotten here, I sort of met Heath right away, and, you know. The rest is history.’

‘Did you ever see the redwoods?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘In California. The … the redwoods. Did you ever see them?’

She nodded. ‘I was in the Scouts when I was younger and we went camping. Up north.’

‘Did they make you feel small?’

‘Like a flea. They didn’t even seem real. Like aliens had put them there, or something. I was little at the time and I bet ten of me couldn’t even wrap all the way round the bottom.’

‘Did you … like that?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I didn’t really like or dislike it. It just sort of was.’

I don’t know what possessed me to ask. But suddenly it seemed my thoughts and my words were one and the same – I was empty of everything besides what I was saying, now. There wasn’t anything else. I might as well have been talking to myself. ‘Where do you think we go when we die?’

June scoffed. ‘I don’t actually know. I don’t think anyone actually knows.’

‘Because I don’t think we go anywhere.’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe it’s something more than that, though. Not cliché, like, you know, heaven, or anything. I think maybe we just, like, float through the ether forever.’

It was so scary I almost started to cry. ‘That sounds horrible.’

‘No, I don’t think so. Like, I don’t think it’d be, like, Earth-Sydney, or Earth-June. I think it’s a version of ourselves, but … different. The kind that’s happy to float.’

A gust of wind sent snow tumbling from the bridge, and I shivered.

I felt the urge to tell her, so strongly that I almost couldn’t imagine not telling her. Not thinking of the fact that Heath might have already told her, or the obvious contradiction in trying to combat death with more death: ‘I’ve been doing something kind of fucked up.’

‘All right. What kind of fucked up?’

‘I’ve been watching videos of people dying,’ I said.