The small red-ringed events on the calendar that hung on the fridge were in fact stepping stones that helped her navigate from one month to the next, each one offering a tiny rainbow on the grey horizon, something to look forward to on the dullest or most trying of days.

Natalie’s birthday . . . Jake’s am dram night . . . School staff bingo . . . Mario’s five-a-side BBQ . . . Mum’s 80th . . . Little red circles that took no more than a second to draw and yet would provide days and days of glorious anticipation . . . twenty days until . . . ten days until . . . tomorrow . . . counting down her life. That’s what she did. Counted down her life until what – death? The thought was as sobering as it was distressing.

Again she looked in the mirror, wondering if she was happy or unhappy or just not happy right now, and were they the only three choices? Was there a fourth category of ‘happy-ish’, with an underlying sadness that could at times overwhelm her?

This might be as good as it gets for the rest of my days . . . a half-life, a hidden life, because I don’t have the courage. Courage . . .

She had done such a good job at hiding that she was now actually invisible. Mario didn’t see her, not any more. He was happy to fart or scratch his groin while he watched TV, as if her presence was of no consequence, giving her no more consideration than the remote control, his footstool or the lamp in the corner, sometimes changing the channel without asking if she was watching. Maybe he would notice her if she was younger, prettier and cleverer.

There was a time in her early teens when she had been all of those things. And yet, back then, all she had wanted was for her life to fly faster and faster to get over the hump, ride the wave, move on.

What might her life have been like if she had made one different small decision on one seemingly insignificant day? That’s all it would have taken. One moment when she might not have volunteered to pick litter after school, or she could have gone to the bathroom, cadged a lift, visited the library, stopped to tie her shoelaces, any number of permutations, but all meaning she would not have been at the bus stop at the same time as Lawrence Paulson. She would therefore not have initiated sex with him and her whole life might not have fallen apart in the way that it had. And just like that, her tears came: hot, salty tears that were all-consuming. It still had the power to do that to her, the memories vivid and so sharp they cut as deep as they always had.

I was only a little girl, just a little girl . . . Sixteen, but so naive . . .