I get dressed slowly, automatically thinking I’ll avoid Jesse until he leaves, until I remember he’s here because he’s moving in. There’s no avoiding. I read a book on my bed for a while, but I can’t concentrate on the words. I try playing on my phone, but it makes me hyper aware of the fact my hands are shaking a little. I start to worry that Jesse will bond with Harper while I’m hiding in here, and they’ll go to the market without me, and I’ll be the one on the outer.

I poke my head out of my room. Everything is quiet. Jesse’s family have gone. I heard them leave not long after I went into my bedroom. Because it’s a long drive back to our town and they needed to get one of the kids to karate and another one needed a nap and the third was crying, they hustled out the door in a flurry of stress and yelling and I don’t think they even said a proper goodbye to Jesse. I try not to compare that to yesterday, when Mum cried three times before leaving, Nanna solemnly gifted me her precious Saint Christopher medal and Lauren pretended she didn’t care but then made Mum stop the car so she could run back in and hug me one more time. My family is perhaps a touch too co-dependent.

I find Harper in the kitchen.

‘I bought bagels if you want one,’ she says.

‘Yum, yes please.’ My voice is oddly high pitched. Everything I say sounds just a little bit not right, not me. I need to calm down or at least give the appearance of being calm. A physiotherapist once told me that she had never seen someone as incapable of relaxing their shoulders as me, which I chose to take as a compliment.

‘So, do you and Jesse know each other well?’ Harper says, cutting the bagels in two on the table, no chopping board, letting the knife scrape the wood, which makes my eye twitch.

Do we know each other well? The simplest question and I have no idea how to answer.

‘Um, sort of. Not really. Well enough, I guess,’ I babble.

Harper lowers her voice a little, leans forward, ringlets falling across her forehead. Her earrings are gold, in the shape of beautiful tiny little skulls. I have the urge to run to my room and start googling ‘where to buy gold skull earrings’. As if I could pull off skull earrings.

‘So, what’s he like?’ Harper says in an almost-whisper.

My heart glows a little. The way she says it, inviting intimacy, like we’re already friends. But I need to be careful, I need to stop myself from immediately gossiping about him. Jesse lives here now. Harper doesn’t know either of us. I don’t want her first impression of me to be negative.