Sunday 14 August

‘I can’t believe you ate the brie,’ Mum says.

I can’t believe the brie is what she’s fixated on.

‘She said you ate the brie after she specifically told you to put it down. She said you ate the strawberry, too. You don’t even like strawberries.’

‘Why, Katie?’ Dad asks.

‘I was hungry,’ I say.

I can’t explain to them how good it felt to be with Ady and Clem in the Oak Parlour, to be letting things spill, to hear them spilling. It felt so good to hear Clem talk about the water and how she was willing to give it away, to listen to Ady’s certainty, to eat the brie and not care.

On my way out of the room I didn’t feel ashamed or worried. I felt reckless. I felt good. I felt desperate to call Oliver and tell him that I’m not giving up the audition.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Mum says, taking the phone back from Dad. ‘I can hear it in your voice. Something’s going on.’

I almost tell them.

But they’re about to go to bed early so they’re up in time for backbreaking work.

‘Were you led by someone?’ Dad asks.

‘She’s not a follower,’ Mum says.

I think back over the day and aim for the truth. ‘I was inspired.’

‘Well,’ Mum says, ‘I hope detention on the weekend is equally inspiring. I hope you’re also inspired by the fact that you’re not getting any more passes out of school until after your detention.’

‘I really need the passes,’ I say.

‘Why? You’ve got all the cheese you need right there in that school. We’re paying a heap of money for you to be there, Katie. We’re paying it because you said it’s what you want.’

‘It is,’ I say.

‘Then act like it.’ She hands the phone back to Dad.

‘It was just a slight malfunction of character,’ I tell him.

He says he knows it was. ‘It happens to us all.’ But he doesn’t say I can have my pass privileges back.

I hang up and Iris is looking at me with her I-told-you-so eyes. We’ve been fighting since I walked into the room and she launched at me because everyone had heard what we did, and she couldn’t believe I’d be so stupid as to get involved with Clem.

‘I didn’t get involved with her – I was helping,’ I said.

‘And look where it got you. That goes on your record. Your permanent record. It affects your chance of a scholarship.’

‘Principal Gaffney said it wouldn’t.’

‘You really think she gives you a free ride after that? You need to stay away from Clem, work hard and not get into any more trouble.’

Iris looks genuinely upset for me. Which is why I don’t tell her what I’m about to do next. I take my toiletry bag. I say I’ll be back in a minute.

I walk down the corridor calmly, but make a turn before I get to the bathroom, towards the basement. I take a second, not even that, to consider what I’m about to do. The road not taken, I think, and head into the darkness, past old costumes and suitcases and broken desks and chairs, feeling my way to the portal. It only takes one strong push.

And I’m free.

‘Hello?’ Oliver answers his phone.

‘Hello,’ I say, stomping my feet partly because it’s cold, and partly because I’m nervous, and mostly because I’m incredibly scared I’ll get caught.

‘Kate?’

‘Oliver?’

‘Now that we’ve established our identities,’ he says, ‘why are you calling?’

‘I escaped,’ I tell him, still slightly out of breath. ‘Through the portal.’

‘The what?’

‘The portal in the basement.’ I give him far too much information about how to get in and out of it. I’m just babbling now, so I get to the point. ‘Don’t ask Juliette. I want to start. Tonight. Only, I don’t have my cello.’ I look down at my feet. ‘I don’t even have shoes. I’m in socks.’

There’s a pause. I wait anxiously, hoping it’s not too late. ‘You don’t go through a portal in socks,’ he says. ‘Don’t you know anything? Stay put. I’m coming.’

He doesn’t take long. He doesn’t live far from the school, as it turns out. ‘Just around the corner,’ he says, looking at me and then at my feet. He says we can’t walk anywhere if I don’t have shoes, so we sit at the tram stop.

‘I’ll have to lie,’ I tell him, ‘which I don’t mind. Only now that I think about it, escaping with a cello will be difficult.’

‘You can use my dad’s. He won’t mind.’

The sky, the lights, the night, are all telling me I made the right decision. I get the strangest thought sitting here. As though inside is a landscape and I am at the very best part of me now. I’ve run right to the end, to the cliffs of myself.

‘I have to tell you something,’ Oliver says. ‘I spoke to Max tonight, told her about what happened at orchestra, about how I wouldn’t budge so I lost the chance of working with you. She said I had to tell you, and I think I need to tell you, too.’

I turn a little more towards him and wait.

‘It’s to do with what you call me,’ he says. ‘The anally retentive fuckwit.’

‘I’d forgotten I called you that.’

‘Alas, it’s not so easy for me to forget.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, it’s okay. I am sometimes, about music, and when I’m nervous. And both things are happening when I’m around you. You make me nervous.’

‘Because I’m so good?’ I joke.

‘Partly,’ he says seriously, but doesn’t elaborate on the point. ‘I brought some music I thought you’d like.’ He hands me an earbud so I can listen. He puts the other in his ear. I’ve never heard the artist before.

‘It’s like Zoe Keating, but not.’

‘Julia Kent,’ he says. ‘This is “Gardermoen”.’

‘The album?’

‘Song. The album is Delay.’

A tram pulls up but we don’t get on. I wonder what we look like, to the people in there, staring out. Two people, joined at the ears by music.

‘How will you get home?’ he asks.

‘I haven’t thought that far.’

The stars sharpen up.

The world becomes more.