Friday 15 July

At the Botanic Gardens everything is green and black and damp. Our guide takes us through the Herbarium and the native path and up to the Volcano which is planted with every kind of succulent imaginable. Lainie keeps saying they look phallic or like baboon bums. Once she says it, I can’t stop thinking it. We laugh and make stupid monkey noises much to Iris’s disgust.

For lunch we have free time to wander, gather intel, take photographs, whatever. I tell Lainie I want to find the Temple of the Winds. It’s this totally romantic-looking structure with columns and a domed roof. It sits at the top of the gardens and from it you can see the river and the city and all the way to the mountains.

We set off for it. Right from the start Lainie’s complaining and saying, ‘Can’t we just get some chips?’ We’re walking alongside the lake when I notice a guy in the distance who looks like Stu. My heart stops for a second. It is Stu!

He’s with a big group of picnickers; about twenty of them, some on camp chairs, some on rugs. I wonder if it’s his family, but they look too disparate. There’s a short, busty woman bossing people about, a guy in a cap who wobbles when he moves and a really fat guy who doesn’t stop talking. Stu’s bending over a girl with a guitar – he’s showing her a chord or something – and I feel mad envy.

Lainie’s voice is gnatty in my ear. ‘Who are you looking at?’

I cup my hand to smell my breath, then tell Lainie I’ll meet her at the cafeteria. ‘There’s something I’ve gotta do.’

When Stu sees me walking towards him, he does a double-take.

‘It’s you!’

‘It’s me.’ I glance down at my uniform. ‘Excursion.’

Stu indicates the party behind him. ‘Colleagues and clients.’

‘Who’s the skirt?’ I ask, trying to be tough.

‘You mean Millie?’

‘She’s got your guitar.’

I’m an idiot. Only now realising that most of the people in Stu’s group look . . . different. I know there’s a politically correct way to say what I’m thinking – ‘intellectually challenged’ or ‘differently abled’. Anyway, Millie is immersed in the guitar, plucking away on one string, but holding it like a baby.

‘Work do. Christmas in July,’ Stu says. ‘Never say no to free food, that’s my motto. I do care work. That guy there is Benny, and that’s Daulton and that’s Ed. They live at the Blue House, residential accommodation. When I do the overnighters, those are the dudes I’m minding. You want to meet them?’ And before I know it he’s leading me over and introducing me to everyone. One guy tries to hide in his jumper, another is all up in my face with a barrage of cricket statistics and Millie smiles at me like I’m amazing.

Stu takes my hand and a plate of half-eaten pavlova. ‘We’re just going for a walk,’ he announces. The busty older woman gives him a look, but he just winks at her and half-marches me across the lawn until he’s out of their view.

‘Where are we going?’

Stu looks around frowning. I’m about to suggest the Temple of the Winds when he says, ‘There.’ He leads me to a clutch of trees that has a hollow just big enough for two people and a pav.

Half an hour goes in five seconds. We gorge on sugar, and kissing, and we roll around in the leaf litter. After a while, Stu sits up.

‘This is no good,’ he says.

‘It isn’t?’

‘We need a place.’

‘Don’t you have a house?’

He looks pained. ‘I live with my parents. It’s temporary. They’re retired. They never go out.’

Stu picks up a branch that holds two seedpods, their smooth necks twisted together. He presents it to me. ‘Ah, the lovers.’ He has a light in his eyes and an edge to his voice. ‘What would happen if you got caught with me in your room?’

‘Expulsion. A BIB is a major infraction.’

‘BIB?’

‘Boy in Bed.’

Stu’s finger has found a hole in my tights and he’s driving me to distraction. I start to babble, ‘There’s a door. We call it the portal. It’s in the basement. It doesn’t lock.’

A text from Lainie, Where are you?

‘Shit!’ I scramble to my feet, brush down my tunic and press myself into Stu for a final kiss. Then I bolt across the gardens, feet nearly sinking in all the soft green lawn.

I get back to the bus just in time.

Ms Yelland eyeballs me. ‘So nice of you to join us, Clem.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, making my eyes big. ‘I got lost.’

I sit, quietly shimmering, with the seedpods, the lovers, in my pocket, and my hand over it making a protective cage. We haven’t gone far when I feel something at the back of my head. I whirl around. Adelaide – Ady – has plucked a twig from my hair. Tash says, ‘What is that?’ Ady flicks the air. ‘Nits.’ She makes a face, her lips all drawn, reminding me of zombie dolls or fork marks in pastry. I give her a fake smile and she goes shadowy for a second. I think, So what if you’re beautiful, I’ve got Stu! Ha! I think this all the way back to the groan of fifth period.