"Frankie, I think you're having a panic attack. You need to breathe, okay. C'mon, deep breaths in and out through your mouth. Breathe in, two, three, four. And out, two, three, four. Try to follow my count. That's it, in and out. Okay, now find something to look at. Pick anything you can see and take note of as many things about it as you can – size, colour, texture, whatever.

Trav's voice is low and soothing. I follow it until my breathing starts to even out. As he crouches on the pavement in front of me, his left hand and wrist are resting on my bare knee. His fingers are long and strong and steady and sure. There's a freckle on the middle one. He's wearing a watch that I know was his Dad's. It's an expensive European brand with a black face and a chunky steel band.

Trav's thumb nail has a bruise under it which he got last weekend when he was trying to help his Mum hang shelves in her study. When he showed it to me on Monday morning the bruise was impressively black. It's starting to fade to a deep grape colour. The injured thumb is stroking across my knee cap in the same rhythm as Trav's breath count – up, two three four, down, two three, four – like both of them are trying to will me back to normalcy just by being there. Eventually, they do.

According to Trav's watch, it takes six minutes for me to calm down enough to actually be able to speak. It feels like hours. Some distant part of me is embarrassed to have fallen apart so completely in front of the steadiest person I know. The rest of me is too exhausted to care.

"How did you know that I was having a panic attack?" I ask him.

"My Mum," he says, moving from where he's been crouching to take a seat on the bench beside me. "When my Dad was diagnosed as terminal, she started having them quite a bit."

"Thank you," I say quietly.

"No thanks required," he squeezes my hand gently. "Do you want to talk about what triggered it."

For the first time in a really long time, I find that I do want to talk about it. With sentences that trip over themselves in their eagerness to escape, I share the whole sordid story.

I don't think my parents ever intended to tell me about my Dad's affair. I found out because the woman he'd been hooking up with somehow got hold of my mobile number and left a message on my voicemail. I guess she was angry that he'd called it off.

At first, I hadn't believed it. My Dad wouldn't do that to my Mum. He wouldn't do it to me.

About six months earlier, he'd started travelling a lot more for work. He's a partner in a law firm so he's always travelled a bit, but when I was 14, he won this big client in Sydney and he started being away a lot more. At first it was just during the week. But then he had to stay some weekends too. One time, he was gone for five weeks straight.

That year, we had to cancel our annual trip to the snow.

Mum and I did Sundays at the Market with the Burgesses by ourselves.

He missed my birthday.

I hated it. I know my Mum did too.

We sucked it up because we loved him and because he assured us it wouldn't be forever. And when he did come home, we tried to make the most of our time together.

More the fool us.

The whole shebang fell apart on a Saturday while I was wearing my netball uniform and full of a cold. My best friend Amy and her Mum dropped me home after the game because my parents had headed to the Yarra Valley for lunch.

My phone had been on silent at the bottom of my bag. I had three missed calls from a private number and one new voicemail. The voicemail made no sense and of course I didn't believe it. This Melanie woman was clearly deranged. No sane person could spew that much disgusting vitriol. Or maybe she had my Dad confused with someone else. Either way, none of it was true. I knew that, so although I was a bit shaken by her bitterness, I'd made a start on my history essay while I waited for Mum and Dad to get home and sort it out.

But they didn't. Sort it out, I mean.

"This woman left a message on my phone..." was all I'd said before the devastation etched across my Mum's face and the guilt ground into my Dad's told me everything I didn't want to hear without either of them uttering a single word.

I'd fled to my room. Not to throw myself down on my bed and cry, although I'd wanted to. Instead, I'd started to pack.

The giant duffel bag I'd used for Year 9 camp had come out from under the bed. In went clothes, my laptop and school books. Favourite photos of me with Amy and our other friends Cassie, Aisha and Natasha. My newest set of artists pastels. Mr Bojangles – the one-eyed sock monkey I'd had since I was a baby. My toiletries bag.

I'd marched back to the kitchen. Still wearing my netball uniform, head cold forgotten, ready to swear my allegiance. I'd expected to find my spirited, no-nonsense Mum with guns blazing, suitcases packed and ready to leave. Instead, my parents were holding hands and talking quietly.

"Come on Mum, let's go."

The look of surprise on her face would have been funny if it wasn't the complete opposite.

"Go where, sweetheart?"

"I don't know. Grandma's. A hotel. Anywhere. But we need to go and we need to go now."

"We aren't going anywhere Francesca. Your Dad and I have talked it over and this... all of it... it's all been a terrible mistake. A mistake. Your Dad loves me and we are going to sort it out."

"No. We need to go Mum. Or he does. This can't be made okay."

"It can Frankie and it will. You need to let us work through it."

Her voice had been firm and hard around the edges. Like somehow this was my fault. And maybe it was a little. After all, I was the one who'd brought up the voicemail like it was no big deal.

So, I'd gone. Slunk back to my room and crawled into bed and tried to pretend that I wasn't splintering into a million pieces. But I'd left the bag packed. Certain she'd come to her senses.

I'm still waiting.

"I'm sorry Frankie, that really sucks," Trav says, when I finally run out of words.

We sit there in silence for a few moments, both deep in thought.

"With that woman you saw him with today though, you said that she kissed him on the cheek and he gave her a hug, you didn't actually see them kiss on the lips or anything did you?"

"Well, no but..."

"Is it possible that they're just friends or work together or something?"

"Trav, she gave him a gift. Work colleagues don't meet up on a Saturday afternoon to give each other presents."

"Okay, not work buddies then, but not necessarily lovers either. You didn't actually see anything that proves he's having an affair."

"Are you defending my Dad?" I spit the words like bullets. He's making me mad. This is why I never tell anyone about this stuff. No one gets it. How could they possibly get it?

"Franks," he implores, holding his hands up. "Don't shoot, I'm on your side remember. I'm not defending your Dad. I know what he did back then was awful. I'm just trying to make sure that you aren't torturing yourself over something that he might not be doing now."

"Once a cheat, always a cheat Riordan, everyone knows that." I'm still spitting.

"Frankie, I'm not sure that that's true and even if it is, I think you owe it to yourself to at least talk to him before you add two and two together and get seven."

I don't want to talk any more. To Trav or to my Dad. What I want is a fight. But it's hard to let fly when Trav point blank refuses to rise to the bait.

Instead, he sits there calmly and waits me out. Golden, stable, full of good energy. The very opposite of bland.

"What could my Dad possibly have to say that would make any of this any better?" I finally ask him. My voice has shrunk in on itself and I hate how vulnerable I sound.

"I don't know. But you'll never know either if you don't talk to him. You have to talk to him Franks." His voice cracks a little and I know that he's thinking about his own Dad.

"I'm so sorry, Trav. I must sound so ungrateful, whining about my daddy issues when yours is so sick."

"My pain's not worse than your pain Franks. It's just different. But maybe... if you think there's any chance at all that you want to sort things out with your Dad... and with your Mum too... maybe don't make the mistake of assuming you have forever to try."

"I won't," I say, taking a shuddering breath.

"Do you think you should call him? He might still be around in the city somewhere. You could meet up with him now and get it over with."

"No, no, let's just go to the gallery. I mean, you bought tickets..."

"Frankie." Though still gentle, his voice has a definite warning edge to it. Like Cass, Travers Riordan is good at sounding firmly parental when he wants to.

"Okay, okay, I'll call him."

"Do you want me to wait with you?"

"Thanks. But I think I need to do this on my own."

"I'll still see you at the party tonight?"

"I hope so."

"Me too."

Trav leans over and kisses my cheek. Like the rest of him, his lips are firm and warm. I feel their imprint on my skin long after he's walked away.