Jesse glances back at me, and our eyes meet. I narrow mine the slightest, slightest bit, a message to him, that…what? That I don’t want us to be housemates any more than he does, but I got here first and if one of us is going to leave then it should be him, that what he did to me five years ago remains the greatest betrayal and humiliation I have ever endured, that I still haven’t forgiven him and I never will. That’s a lot for a momentary, barely noticeable narrowing of eyes to communicate, but I feel like he got the general vibe.

I hurry into my room, shutting the door with relief and then putting several heavy books in front of it in case the toddler tries to come in for round two.

I wonder if Jesse is going to back out. Will he turn to his parents and ask to leave? Well, good. I’m not going to leave. I can’t leave. I’ve already paid my bond and spent a night here and made peace with the idea of the mouse and made loose plans to go to the market with Harper and started setting up a vision board and bought a Myki and told everyone in my life that I’m living in an amazing share house in Melbourne while I study economics with the aim of working for the UN while also being a bestselling author on the side and maybe writing a Oscar-winning screenplay.

This is my dream. I’m not giving it up. I spent months searching for somewhere affordable and half-decent to live. I interviewed with an older guy in his mid-twenties who described himself online as a ‘philisopher, feminist, pacifist, entrepreneur, craftsman, communist, artist, lover, soul seeker’, and then he said, when we chatted over the phone, that he liked living with younger women because he felt he had so much to teach them. I talked with three girls who assured me that ‘the room is small and a bit unconventional but really nice’ which turned out to mean that the room was an area of carpet behind a couch, surrounded by a ‘privacy curtain’ (a sheet pegged to a clothes horse). Then Mum told me a couple in our town was looking for someone to live with their granddaughter. The relief was overwhelming.

I have nowhere else to go if this house doesn’t work out. I don’t want to live with a creepy guy or behind someone’s couch. And I can’t move home. I can’t fail within forty-eight hours of leaving. I am simply not the kind of person who fails.