Sunday 21 August

When Tash arrives at ten to eleven, my mother is in the front garden pruning the quince tree. Charlie is helping, stacking offcuts.

‘That looks like a job for Robert, Jen.’

My mother looks at Tash, then looks at me, and I could swear she’s deliberately trying to scare Tash off. ‘No more Robert. No more Marion. This is the era of austerity at 22 River Place, Hawthorn, Tash. At least until I get a job.’

The bemused look Charlie gives me reminds me so much of our father that I get a lump in my throat.

Tash’s eyes are gossip saucers. She looks at me with pity and loathing, the only response she knows to a ‘coming down in the world’ story. The pity component is a down payment on friendship retention in the event that we pick ourselves up again.

My mother lops off a branch that I’m pretty sure Robert would have left on. Farewell sweet-smelling, fuzzed quinces who will never germinate, grow to maturity and sit in the large blue-and-white bowl making the sitting room smell mysteriously pretty.

No more Marion? Are the bathrooms going to clean themselves? My heart sinks. Noooo. I’m too young to clean bathrooms. Or too old to start. Or neither. I just don’t want to do it.

Red Hot Chili Peppers is filtering into the garden. My mother is singing along, grimly, to ‘Scar Tissue’. This is her ‘I had a life before I had children, you know’ music. It’s also her ‘forty-something lawyers are cool, too’ music. Maybe it’s ‘I managed to use cocaine and let it go, but it got its claws into my husband good and proper’ music, as well. Who knows what’s going on in there?

Tash is texting most of the way as we walk the six minutes to Figgy’s, but I’m just happy not to be getting twenty questions about why I said what I said in class, or about the economy drive at home, so I don’t even ask who she’s talking to.

At the back table in Figgy’s, sitting with my bestie – who looked like she despised me just ten minutes ago – I’m knitting a birdie cardigan sleeve as though it’s just any other day, when Lola and Bec arrive together.

Tash jumps up and walks over to the door to meet them. Why? Advance party to let them know we can’t afford a gardener or a cleaner anymore?

I’ve just worked out how to make little slits in the sleeves – mid-row casting off seven stitches and then continuing on – so I can sew in fabric petals to form wings running from the shoulders to the elbow. It’s not the sort of thing you’d wear very often. Oooh, plan: I’ll wear it a couple of times, label it, and put it out in the world to be shared. Share-wear-ware. It feels like it fits in with Malik-world, but I’m not sure exactly how.

They all say at the same time what a great night I missed at Escalator. A round of giggles and smirks loops and repeats as they settle and sit.

‘Well, spill,’ I say. ‘Something juicy obviously happened.’

Tash says, ‘Let’s order first; my hangover needs food.’

We have the usual. Me: breakfast burrito; Tash: the hotcakes that she’ll half finish; Lola: avocado, haloumi and heirloom tomatoes on sourdough, with a side of spinach; Bec: fruit salad that she’ll devour, following which, still hungry, she’ll finish Tash’s hotcakes. The others each order freshly squeezed orange juice, eight bucks a pop. I’ll have to ask if we can pay for what we order rather than split the bill. Coffee plus burrito plus two-buck tip will clean me out.

‘What are you wearing, hon?’ asks Tash, as though she’s only just noticed my clothes. My mother has enough odd designer clothes that Tash has to check before she knows if she should praise or condemn, just in case I’ve borrowed something expensive. It’s not so bad. Almost the entire world relies on other people’s opinions to tell them what to think.

I’m wearing a new ensemble made from the Gram upholstery fabric treasure-trove. It has completely different fabric front and back. An exaggerated onesie shape, like a paper doll, three-quarter sleeves and leg length.

I put birdie down, stand up arms out to the side facing them, and then turn the other way before I sit back down, smiling. ‘It’s called, now you see me: escape-wear for parties.’

Tash looks at Bec, eyebrows up.

Bec responds. ‘Since when do you give your clothes titles?’

‘I don’t know.’ I don’t want to say: Since I started thinking they’re my art. I start knitting again, and shrug. Since why the fuck not? ‘Since birdie, I guess. But there are lots more in my head with titles.’ It gives me a spurt of happiness, even with the family shit happening, even with PSST horrors, to think of all the things yet to be made.

‘You know, you look –’ Lola starts. They look at each other, as if three-way glances zipping back and forth above ricotta hotcakes and blueberries will come up with the right party line – or as though they’ve had the conversation already, without me. ‘Okay, Ady, we’ve been noticing lately . . . you’ve gone from being a bit arty, and kind of cool, to looking –’

‘Peculiar,’ finishes Tash. ‘As though we’re not even the same species anymore.’ She laughs lightly, not unkindly. I know this laugh. This laugh lets you get away with saying the nasty stuff because you’re sort of kidding. I use this laugh myself, regularly.

Looking down at my cardigan sleeve in progress as though it might be diseased, Tash raises an index finger to the passing waiter, and checks with us. ‘More coffee?’

I think of the austerity drive. ‘Not for me, I’ve only got a twenty.’

Tash looks impatient. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

Bec makes sympathy eye contact with me. ‘No, I don’t want another coffee either.’

‘Just two more skinny lattes,’ Tash says, as though Bec and I are being difficult.

‘Thanks,’ I add to the girl taking our order. My family might be kaput, and my clothes might be too much for some people, and half the world might think I’m a fan of anal intercourse, but at least I say thank you to the person waiting my table.

‘So, too bad you couldn’t come last night,’ says Lola.

‘I got social outing number two crossed off the Malik list, so that was good,’ I say, smiling, remembering the party, remembering Max and wondering how Max and my friends would get on. Not quite seeing it.

Friends. Interesting. I see Clem asking me if I’m okay at detention, and Kate inviting me home with her for the long weekend before I see these guys, my actual friends.

‘Poor you. Wasting a whole night with the boring boarders.’ Tash eats a micro mouthful of hotcake like you hear actors have to do when they are performing scenes that involve eating and talking.

‘It wasn’t so bad.’

‘You’re too kind.’

‘They’re okay.’ I think about detention and the party, and I don’t want to sell them short anymore. ‘They’re better than okay, they’re nice. I like them.’

Tash starts and the others follow – incredulous laughter. It’s contagious. I give in.

‘I know, all right. But I do! I didn’t know them before.’

‘You’ll be telling us you like Iris soon.’ Another peal of laughter.

‘Don’t be silly. I have to draw the line somewhere.’ Feeling a tiny bit guilty. Why did I have to laugh and seem to agree like that? And shocking bore though Iris is, even Clem manages to avoid her and not say nasty things about her.

‘Good to hear you haven’t completely lost it,’ says Tash.

The three of them exchange looks again.

‘What is it with you guys? Do you have something to say? Say it.’

Bec starts. ‘Well – we thought you went a bit too far with the PSST response.’

Tash’s lip curls. ‘No guy wants his ex saying things like that, even if it’s meant to be a joke.’

I look at them. I’m the incredulous one now. ‘No girl wants a scummy social media site telling the world she likes it up the arse, either. I decided it was better to go for humour than to get defensive and deny it.’

‘You were pretty unfair on Rupert, that’s all.’

‘Well, tough. It’s his stupid school all that PSST stuff comes from.’

‘We don’t know that,’ says Tash, as though I’ve offended her.

‘What, are you Basildon’s best friend suddenly?’

The looping looks do another lap of the table. Things are smelling ratty. I have one of those leaps of gut instinct that leads me to a nasty place: that’s the juice – Tash and Rupert.

‘You didn’t!’ I’ve known Tash for long enough to see when she’s squirming. ‘How could you?’

‘Who told you?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Well, you made it pretty clear you don’t want him. And he’s not likely to be alone for long.’

‘What happened to the one-year rule? It’s barely been two weeks.’

‘I don’t even know why that’s a thing,’ Tash says.

The others are quiet. They know she’s in the wrong, but they also know she’s the strong one at the moment. That strength oscillates between me and Tash, and the others always know where it lies.

But I’m not putting up with this. ‘Oh, okay, sure – recap:

‘In case your friend changes her mind and wants the boy back.

‘To avoid hearing or engaging in inappropriate pillow talk about your friend.

‘To punish friend’s ex for whatever part he played in dropping friend, or, acting like a douche and deserving to be dropped by friend, by denying him alternative nice girlfriend.

‘To avoid the possibility of any unfortunate friend-to-friend comparison by the ex.

‘To avoid any uncomfortable friend witnessing of friend hooking up at parties with the ex within close proximity of her having recently been the one hooking up with him.’

I look around the table. ‘So, that’s how I remember it – it’s pretty friend-friendly. Did I miss anything?’

Bec shakes her head. She looks close to tears.

We wrote the rules down at the beginning of last year. And kissed the notebook with lipstick lips. (I know. But it was Year 9.) The rules are – were – sacred. It’s not like I want Rupert back, but this disrespects me, and it disrespects our friendship.

‘I refuse to let this affect our friendship,’ says Tash.

‘Too late for that, girlfriend.’ I roll the word in acid, carefully pack up my birdie sleeve and knitting needles, leave the twenty on the table, and go.

Walking into the hard winter sunshine past the primary school where Tash and I started in Prep together, before we both moved to St Hilda’s in Year 6, my pace is fuelled by anger over Tash’s shitty behaviour. I’m also worrying about the whole family nightmare and imagining my dad sitting in some horrible room with a single bed, but then, like a huge happy wave knocking everything sideways, I’m thinking of Max. I kissed Max last night, and she kissed me. Not a posed, fake, musicclip kiss like we used to do at parties in Year 9 – cringe. No. Long, slow, real kisses full of sex and romance. And what comes next? I look again at the text from her that I woke up to. No words, just a screen full of ladybird emojis. I told her that I love ladybirds, and I do.