I take some painkillers, and now I’m sitting on the couch, heat pad on my abdomen, convincing myself I am not really in pain, not desperate pain anyway, when Harper and Penny walk in.

‘I bought us a lamp from IKEA!’ Harper says. ‘And this blue-and-pink striped pot, or maybe it’s a vase. I’m not really sure what it’s for but I like the look of it.’ She pauses and looks at me. ‘Are you okay?’ she says, seeing the heat pad.

‘Fine, I just have some cramps,’ I say. ‘I’m getting ready to have dinner with my dad.’

Jesse appears in the doorway. ‘It’s more serious than she’s saying. It might be her appendix,’ he says, as if I can’t hear him.

‘It’s fine.’ I frown at him.

‘You collapsed at the Tan,’ he says, glowering back at me, arms folded.

‘Collapsed!’ Penny gasps.

‘He’s exaggerating. I sat down on the grass, that’s all,’ I say. Jesse’s insistence on making this a big deal is making me determined to prove that it isn’t. You’re wrong, and you don’t know me.

‘Brooke, that sounds serious,’ Harper says. ‘You shouldn’t go out.’

‘It’s fine, really. Plus I haven’t seen my dad in a long time, and he’s really excited to have dinner,’ I say. ‘Really excited’ might be an exaggeration but I have no proof that he’s not really excited, so I’m running with it.

‘It could be your gallbladder. My mum had gallstones and she said it was worse than childbirth,’ Penny says with concern.

‘My dad thought he had gallstones but he had a hernia. Is there anything, like, pushing out of your stomach?’ Harper asks.

‘No!’ I say, horrified at the thought, but I touch all over just in case. Why does everyone have to have a bad story? Why can’t one of them say, my cousin had really bad pain one day and it turned out to be absolutely nothing at all and the next day her skin was glowing and she met the love of her life and adopted a puppy.

Penny frowns and looks at Jesse.

‘You should drive her to the restaurant,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ Harper says.

‘No!’ My voice is close to shouting. ‘No,’ I say again, more calmly. ‘I’ll get an Uber.’ I can’t really afford an Uber, but I do not want Jesse to drive me.

‘I can drive you,’ Jesse says, and he grabs his keys off the table.

Penny and Harper smile encouragingly at him. Ugh. Saint Jesse. Martyr Jesse. He’ll be giving himself feel-good credits for helping me out: he’ll go to sleep tonight thinking, I’m such a good person for helping poor, pathetic Brooke today.