I walk around our farm one last time. The shed is empty and when I shout ‘Hellooooo!’ my voice echoes into the rafters, where the pigeons live. Dad sold our farming equipment: his tractor, the quad bikes, feed, mowers, tools, seed, mulch and smelly manure. Everything is gone. Soon we will be, too.

A lizard skitters across the dusty, hay-scattered floor, stops and looks at me quizzically. As if to say, ‘You’re leaving without saying goodbye?’ I tiptoe towards it, but it shoots away and disappears. Inside, the house is stripped to bones. No piles of books or random craft projects on the kitchen table. No forgotten, half-drunk cups of tea or Mum’s award-winning scones cooling on the counter. No saggy blue couch and temperamental TV. No muddy work boots cluttering up the entry.

I put my palms on the bare walls of my bedroom and remember how it looked before: piles of clothes on the floor, unmade bed, laptop glowing on the desk, lolly wrappers with an ant trail on the side-table, schoolwork, drawings and paintings, scattered hair ties, running shoes with tangled laces.

All my stuff is packed up in boxes marked ‘Jones’, piled into the tray of the ute like a game of Tetris. All that’s left is my mattress and sleeping bag on the floor, where I slept badly last night, wanting to lock the doors and stay here forever.

There are four bumps of Blu Tack where my Home Is Where My Cat Is poster – an adorable sketch of a cat’s face, with a heart for a nose – used to hang…

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