When I left home, at age 15, I had nowhere to stay, so a school friend’s mother offered to let me live with her and her children for a while. At first I slept on the floor in my friend’s room; later I was given a small foldout foam sofa and a space in the living room. I did my best to keep out of the house when I wasn’t at school or work, but I knew that my presence was inconvenient.

After a few weeks it was clear that my friend was tired of the arrangement and wanted me out. I too wanted to leave, but still had nowhere to go: the counsellors at Centrelink instructed me to move back in with my parents, but that wasn’t something I could bear to entertain. Fortunately my school friend’s mother was still sympathetic. We became very close as the weeks wore on, and that intimacy developed into something more when she came home from a party one night semi-drunk, and slid under the covers of the foam sofa.