‘I can see the ocean, clear blue water sparkling in early morning light.’

‘What do you see when you look at my face. Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me!’

‘I can see the most beautiful sunset.’

‘What about my body?’

‘Your breasts like… like those of a… a teenage goddess. You’ve got the figure of an angel and legs like Venus de Milo.’

‘That’s right, that’s exactly what I’m like.’

She opened the door a fraction and gained a wider view of what was going on.

The man was bouncing up and down on her mother, whose legs were wrapped around his backside, a tight knot to seal him to her.

‘I’m the best you’ve ever had, right?’ said her mother.

‘I’ll never get better. You’re the best, you’re the best, you’re the best!’

She opened the door some more and saw that her mother was looking into the huge mirror on the wall to the right of the bed. Her eyes were locked into her reflection as if they were glued to the image on the glass that entranced her.

‘I am gorgeous, I am beautiful, I am…’

It was as if their bodies seized up in the same pattern of moments. They cried out together as if they were both utterly lost and completely in pain.

She opened the door wider and saw that her baby brother was at the bottom of the bed, standing and watching in the silence that constantly defined him. In his mouth was a dummy and he watched his mother and her visitor without any emotion, and she guessed he’d seen and heard everything, more, much more than she had seen.

The man rolled off her mother and lay on his back beside her.

Her mother stared at her face in the mirror, her long blonde hair fanning out across the pillow.

‘And, so,’ said her mother to her own reflection. ‘Off she floats to nowhere.’

He reached out towards her breasts but she threw his hand away.

‘Get out!’ It was the voice her mother used when she was boiling with rage, usually during and after the shouting matches she had with her father.

Her brother fell to his hands and knees and crawled around the corner of the bed towards the door. She urged him forward with both hands and her mouth, which opened and closed, opened and closed as she urged…

Come on, come on, come on, and away…

‘And take your juvenile poetry shit with you.’

‘What did I do wrong?’ asked the young poet, the rising of unshed tears in his question.

Silence, the kind that bit down hard into the deepest place where sorrow reigned with a rod of jagged ice.

She reached out and swooped up her baby brother.

‘What did you do wrong?’

Her mother sounded like she was going to explode.