When I was younger, I would prepare a list of topics to discuss with him on phone calls, a minimum of ten, because several of them would not lead to anything beyond an ‘Oh that’s interesting, sweetheart’ from him and then I needed to scramble to the next thing when he asked no follow-up questions. Now I don’t bother with that, I just ask him about his favourite topics (wine, his fantasy football team, flying drones, paddleboarding) and nod along.

At worst, tonight’s dinner will give me some new funny stories to share with Mum and Nanna. Lauren and I like to give Mum little offerings of the most out-of-touch things Dad says, as a reward for raising us mostly on her own. At best, though, Dad and I might really connect. Despite all his flaws, I still love him. The fun I had with him growing up was not when he was socialising and having what he thought of as fun, but the times when we played chess together, or he taught us how to play poker, or pretended to be a monster and chased us screaming through the house, or when we watched movies on a Saturday afternoon and he set up a barrier of couch cushions that Lauren and I could hide behind in the scary bits. I hold onto these memories tightly, as proof. I secretly hope that maybe he’s the kind of person who struggled with the responsibility of being a parent to kids, but now that I’m eighteen and living out of home, an adult of sorts, there’s less pressure on him, and he could do better. He didn’t have to tell me he was in Melbourne, I would never have known. He wants to see me.

I walk from our house to the Tan, do some stretches, pull my shoulders back. The plan is: walk for two minutes, run for two minutes, and continue like that around the whole loop. Maybe even run for three minutes if I’m feeling good. Simple.

At first, it works well. Apart from a weird stomach pain, I feel okay. I push a bit on my two minutes of running, thinking, the harder I run, the faster I will find solutions to my life. Or the sooner I will feel the famous runner’s high. I could really do with that right now. Except my left hamstring starts to hurt, and two minutes is suddenly a very long time, and my right hamstring is also hurting but in a different way to the left one, I am sure I can feel two—no, wait, three—blisters forming, my bra isn’t really giving me the kind of support I want, and the stabbing pain in my gut is getting more and more intense.