"Riding in a car."

"Riding in a glass elevator. Man, my old building used to have one, and riding up to the top floor was like magic."

"I'll miss being in an aeroplane, off somewhere faraway and fabulous. I'll even miss plane food!"

"Nev, the most exotic place you've ever been is the Gold Coast for a boozy weekend."

"Right! Like I said, fabulous."

"I'll miss just being able to call people. Not that I ever really did, lol, I'm a millennial, but the thought that I could, I'll miss that. Now if someone isn't with me, that's it. I have no idea how they're doing or if they're even still alive..."

I hadn't meant for things to get dark so quickly. We were sitting around yet another campfire, albeit in a truly idyllic location, and we were passing the time before bed by playing another round of 'stuff I'll miss in the post-apocalyptic world.'

But as everyone's faces fell, I realised I'd screwed up by mentioning phones and our general lack of communication with the people we loved. I could tell that Rueben was thinking about Alena and how there would never be any closure there, how Mischa would never receive an out-of-the-blue call from her mum. Nev and Bailey were watching each other, wary and longing, each clearly considering the ramifications of being separated by the Tasman Sea. Even Simon was stoic. For him, no phones meant no way ever to reconcile with his son and daughter, and the end of their story would dangle forever like a dropped call, mid-sentence.

It had been such a peaceful afternoon until that point, a welcome plateau on our laborious journey. The Lake Tyrell campsite was abandoned, seemingly in a hurry, with Eskys and camping gear dumped everywhere. "People must have hightailed it out when they heard the news about the nanobots," said Bailey.

"Lucky for us," said Simon, rescuing a six-pack of beer from beside a toppled tent and cracking one open.

When we'd searched the campsite thoroughly and found it empty, we claimed a set of small cabins on the south side of the lake. The accommodation was nothing fancy; the cabins were wooden, containing a room with a small couch and a double bed, but they felt like five-star luxury compared to our tents.

"Doors that lock," Rueben murmured in my ear as he passed, causing me to drop my water bottle mid-refill. The tanks thankfully worked, which meant we could relax on the hydration-front for a while, and we found a cold-water shower at the back of each cabin, so everyone managed to have a quick rinse to scrub away the road.

Refreshed, we'd lit the fire, made dinner, put Mischa to bed, and allowed ourselves some precious down time. It had almost felt like a holiday until I'd managed to depress the crap out of everyone.

I clapped my hands and tried to shake my friends out of their funks. "I have a different question. We can't go back to the way life was, so if we're stuck like this, what's your new dream? Like, picture yourself in a year – what does happy look like?"

Faces brightened as they considered the future. Bailey said, "I want to be around people who accept me. Maybe find an old typewriter somewhere, start writing poetry again."

"I didn't know you wrote poetry," said Nev, awed. "Can I read some, please?"

"Poetry is born in pain. You'll probably be written into their poems as some kind of hideous dragon, Neveah" warned Simon.

Nev's eyes grew round. "What? You wouldn't do that, would you, Bailey?"

Bailey had an impish glint as they said, "Of course not. I could never write you as a dragon, Nev."

"Thank you."

"You'd be a gorgon, for sure."

"Wait, what's a gorgon?"

Stifling a giggle, I turned to Rueben. "What about you?"

He stretched back, leaning into the comfort of one of the cushy camping chairs we'd found vacated around the site. "I want to be somewhere Mischa is safe, where she can run around and not feel scared. I want to see her grow into a woman who is brave and hopeful."

"But that's Mischa. What about you?"

He reconsidered. "I can picture myself with someone, reading books by firelight, snuggling close to keep warm in winter."

God, I want that. In that moment, I wanted that so powerfully, it took all my strength not to throw myself into his arms in front of everyone and cry, Me! Me! Pick me!

I rubbed my eyes, as if I could clear them of Rueben's vision. What is wrong with me? Dean. I love Dean. I'm going to Dean, and it's going to be magical. So why was it getting harder to picture his face, or find him in my heart?

Rueben went on. "I think I'd like to start practicing again. There's no Psychological Society to prevent me from helping patients anymore, and god knows people are going to be traumatised and grieving for years to come after an event like this. If I can help, I'd like to."

"That would be amazing," I said. "You'd be brilliant."

"You could start a roadside stand like Lucy from those Charlie Brown cartoons," said Nev excitedly.

We all laughed, but it was with Nev, not at her.

"What about you, Nev?" I asked.

She paused, flummoxed. "Honestly? I have no idea. My whole life was built around socials. Now that's all gone, I'm not sure I'm really good for anything."

"That's not true." Simon leaned forward. "You're brave and you're kind and you're tough, Neveah. There's plenty of need for women like you in this world."

"Wow. Thanks, Simon." Nev seemed blown away.

"He's right," said Bailey softly. "You're incredible, Nev."

"Thank you."

They shared a moment with the rest of us watching, but before it could get awkward, Nev said, "Actually, there is something I've thought about doing. See, I'm actually a really good sewer, because I'm used to adjusting all my clothing. You can't have an outfit that looks the same as everyone else's so I'd change little things, add, take away, shorten, tighten, that kind of stuff. My nonna taught me how to sew, and I love it."

"That's cool, Nev," I said genuinely.

"Yeah?" She bristled happily. "So, like, there will probably be enough clothes for the next few years or whatever, but eventually, people will run out and they'll need help altering something. Or I could learn how to make things from patterns – I bet no one has thought to raid the haberdashers yet, so I could store up bolts of fabric and cotton."

Bailey spoke up. "If I find a pedal sewing machine while I'm looking for my typewriter, you can have it."

"Thanks. That means a lot."

Rueben nudged me with his foot. "Your turn, Karla."

"Me?" I only had one clear image of my future: being skinny. Slender arms, toned legs, flat stomach. Cheek bones taut, my back sinewy. Bailey was right; now wasn't the best time for a crazy diet, but when we reached the farm, my only goal was to reduce my weight down to a point where people would call me willowy instead of buxom.

But that wasn't an appropriate dream to share with the team, so I said instead, "I'd like to sit on a council, I think. I'm a problem solver, and I know I could help to find some order and solutions as we try to find our way forward."

"Politics? Cool." Bailey approved.

"And in my downtime, I'd take up ceramics again. In uni, I used to go and hang out with the arts students, and I got hooked on pottery. You don't need electricity to run a kiln, and there's plenty of clay in Tassie." Back before Day Zero if a plate broke, you just ducked down to Target and bought a new one. This new world required everyone to think more sustainably. "We'll need all the old crafts back again – the sewers, the potters, the smiths."

"Don't forget the brewers," said Simon. "My dream is to build a little cider brewery. You toss me a mug, young lady, and I'll fill it with cider from Tassie's best apples. I'll have a little place of my own, and every night, I'll sit with a flagon of the good stuff and watch the sun go down over the rolling hills."

We were all silent for a moment, struck by Simon's beautiful vision. "That sounds amazing," I said.

"Can I visit?" said Nev.

"You're welcome any time, my girl." Simon smiled at her, and I realised that Simon thought of Nev as his daughter as much as she'd adopted him as her road trip dad.

The topic expired, as conversations always did after a time. Bailey looked over at me, their grey eyes keen in the dim light. "So, Karla. I think it's time."

"Time for what?"

"Your story. The one who hurt you."

"Oh. That."

"Yeah," said Nev, jumping in to support Bailey. "Everyone else has done theirs, it's totally your go!"

Dread began to fill me up, shockingly cold as if someone had stuck a hose in me and turned it on. "But... It's getting late."

"No, it's not," said Simon unhelpfully. He pointed at his watch. "It's barely eight."

"I... I don't have a drink!" I said, suddenly triumphant. I was certain Simon had run his grog stores dry, which explained his low energy and slow riding.

He ruined my plan by pulling a bottle of red from his bag. "Got you covered there. It's the good stuff too. Nothing like a $500 bottle of plonk to get you in the mood for stories."

He poured everyone a cup, and I solemnly accepted mine. Unable to think of another reason to delay or defer my turn, I swallowed a big gulp, barely tasting the silky, expensive grenache. "Okay. But this is really hard."

"We know. We've been there too," said Rueben, shifting his chair closer to mine. "We're all here for you."

I blew out a long breath, then began. "My story is like Simon's. I'm the one who hurt myself. I was nineteen. He was twenty-two." I smiled as it all came back to me: the way I'd felt in those early days. "He called me Kay. I called him Dom. It was my first real relationship, and oh man, it was heady stuff."

I wouldn't detail it for the group, but my memory vaults spilled open with a slew of images: Dom's lean torso as he peeled off his shirt, the sight of our legs tangled up in my white sheets, his face above mine as he pressed into me for the first time. Involuntarily, I shivered. "I lost my virginity to Dom. And I had no regrets, unlike all my friends who'd popped their cherry with randoms, guys they didn't care about.

"I was living in Melbourne at the time, and so was he. He was in a shared apartment, but I had my own place, a tiny studio on Lygon Street, so we stayed at mine mostly. We could spend an entire weekend there and never come up for air, ordering in food, having sex, watching TV..."

"Sounds romantic," sighed Nev.

"Sounds boring," said Bailey. I shot them a look; Bailey knew the ending of the story, but not the details. They'd seen me when I was shattered afterwards, but I needed them to understand there had been good times too.

"It was perfect," I said. "I'd never in a million years thought that someone like Dom would fall for me. He was so handsome, and I was just this blobby kid."

Rueben asked, "What did your family think of him?"

Silently, I cursed the way his questions always cut through to the tricky topics. "Well, we actually didn't tell our families we were dating."

"Why not?"

"Dom felt that family involvement only complicated things." I remembered one of the few times I'd tried to raise it with him. He'd rolled his eyes. Babe, family is messy. And besides, I want you all to myself... He'd placed my hand on his hard-on, and that was the end of the conversation. To the others, I said, "I didn't mind. Really. What we had was so special, I didn't need anything else."

"It sounds isolating," said Rueben.

"It wasn't. I had him, and I was his."

"Oo!" said Nev. "Tell me about all the romantic dates he took you on!"

"Well, we didn't really do stuff like that. I was a broke uni student, and Dom was struggling to find the right job after finishing his bachelor's degree."

"But... you must have gone out to dinner, or had picnics in the park?" Nev was crestfallen.

"No. Dom used to say, 'Why would I want to go out there when we could just stay here and be us.'" I'd thought it was the most romantic notion ever, that we were too in love to share even a moment with the outside world.

Bailey cut through my rose-tinted version. "So, you didn't go anywhere, you didn't do anything, and he didn't introduce you to his family or friends. Sounds like he was ashamed of you."

"I... It wasn't the way you're making it sound, Bailey." My voice rose defensively. "It wasn't about shame. Dom wanted to work in corporate law, and everything was about appearances. He couldn't be seen with someone like me, or it might have hurt his career."

"What do you mean, someone like you?"

"Someone fat." There. I'd said it. A single tear of shame slid down my nose and I wiped it away angrily. "He'd just started at a new firm, and all the other lawyers had super-fit, super-skinny girlfriends. Dom had an image to maintain. He couldn't have a lard-arse like me hanging off him. It would have been embarrassing."

More embarrassing was when Dom had to explain this to me. "Babe, you know that if it was my choice, I'd have you there in a heartbeat," he'd said one night as he straightened his bowtie in the mirror. He had a fancy work dinner that night, his first one since starting at the firm, and he was desperate to make the right impression. "This is good for us, I promise. I'll get established, then we can talk about this again down the track. Besides, this one's on you. If you stuck to your diet, you'd be ten kilos lighter by now. I would have bought you a pretty dress, and you could have come with me."

"I'm sorry," I'd whispered miserably. I'd tried to stay on the diet - god, how I'd tried. But I was tired all the time, and my periods had stopped, and the dizziness was making it hard to concentrate. I'd started eating carbs again during my exam period because I couldn't afford to fail, but instead I'd failed him.

Dom had shaken his head sadly. "Sometimes I think you love food more than you love me. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I've always known you were lazy and I've tried to overlook it."

Once he'd left, I'd sobbed until my throat was raw. I made myself vomit in the toilet, regurgitating the veggie wrap I'd eaten for lunch, and I didn't eat again for a week, until I started shivering so hard from being cold that when my mum had seen me, she'd rushed me to the doctors.

To the group around the fire, I said, "I tried to lose weight for him, followed the diets and exercise plans he put me on, but it never seemed to work. I wasn't good enough for him, and we both knew it."

A few stray mozzies filled in the gaping silence with their buzzing. Slowly, Simon said, "Let me get this straight. This bloke kept you at home, used you as an easy lay, never let you meet any of his people, and told you that you were too fat to be seen with him in public. And you seriously believe that he loved you?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. It hadn't been the way Simon made it sound. Had it?

Rueben said, "Karla, sometimes it's hard to recognise coercive control when we're used to it."

"What's coercive control?" asked Nev.

"It's a form of psychological abuse. Coercive control is an act or a pattern of acts that's used to harm, punish, or frighten someone. Abusers can use assault or threats, but sometimes it's more subtle, like humiliation and isolation." Rueben leaned forward in full shrink mode. "Karla, did you ever turn him down for sex?"

"No," I admitted. Not even when I'd been so dizzy I could barely stand, or my period cramps had crippled me. I took pride in being there for his needs.

"Did you feel as though you had control in your relationship?"

"Yes! He used to say that he didn't know what he'd do if he left me. Once, when I couldn't come over because I was stuck with my study group, Dom called me and said that he was staring at a bottle of sleeping pills, thinking about taking them all because I wasn't by his side." I felt triumphant. My presence meant the difference between his life being worthwhile and suicidal thoughts. If that wasn't power, then I didn't know what was.

But Rueben shook his head. "Threats of suicide and self-harm are actually a major red flag in abusive relationships. They're another form of control. What did you do when he said that to you?"

"What do you think I did? I left the study group and ran to his house as fast as I could!" I was his saviour, and the look on his face when I burst in the door was such a turn-on. He'd tossed me to the sheets, and growled, I don't like to share you. You're mine.

That was also the first night I'd experienced anal sex – another fact I wouldn't be sharing with the group. I hadn't thought about that night in so long, and even now, I flinched at the memory of the agonising encounter.

But Dom had been so happy afterwards. God, that was good. You loved that, didn't you, dirty girl? he'd said huskily, biting my earlobe. I didn't have the heart to tell him how much pain he'd caused me; I just assumed that once again, I was doing it wrong – just like my orgasms.

Rueben interrupted my reminiscing. "So, you left your study to be with him. Do you really think you were the one in control?"

No. Not when he put it like that. But I wasn't giving Rueben the satisfaction of my answer, so I rolled on. "Anyway, none of this is what I wanted to talk about. It's what happened at the end of our relationship. We'd been together for about two years, I had just turned twenty-one, and I screwed up."

"How?"

"I got pregnant." My fingers interlaced themselves at my belly, as if they could bring back the tiny life that had once been there. "Dom hated using condoms, and I couldn't take the pill. I tried to be careful, but it didn't work and I fell pregnant."

"Wait," said Nev, "how is that your screw up? Did he know you couldn't take the pill?"

"Yes..."

"Well, I'm sorry, but not liking condoms isn't a good enough reason to not wear them."

"She's right," said Bailey. "Men share responsibility for contraception."

"I could have done more," I defended. "I could have gotten an IUD, or an implant."

"So why didn't you?"

"There wasn't ever time! I was in exams, or studying for exams, and every free minute I was with Dom!" My weekends were spent like I was an on-call surgeon: Dom would ring to let me know he was on his way over, and if I wasn't at home when he arrived, he'd get upset. It meant that I couldn't do anything that would take me further than twenty minutes from my apartment, and that wasn't long enough for a doctor's appointment.

"So you were pregnant. What happened?" asked Rueben.

This was where it got hard. I tried to tell the tale without falling apart. "Because of all my dieting, my period had been sporadic, so I didn't realise I was pregnant until I was about fourteen weeks along. My exams were finally over, and I'd gone to a clinic on campus. They asked me if I wanted an ultrasound. I did, but it wasn't what convinced me that I wanted to keep the baby. I already knew that I loved them."