And now she wants me to look at her because she needs to see my eyes. Needs to work out what is going on in my head. I tell her that the eyes are devious or perhaps I mean to say that they are deceiving and I lift up my head. I’m still resolutely holding the football, as if it can offer me some protection. I want to feel cocooned. For some reason I want to speak to my mother but she is dead and I talk softly to her in my head. I hear her voice and I remember how she used to tell me that kindness is everything and that I should always be kind.

I am not a perpetrator of evil, I say.

This is not about the perpetration of anything, this is about me – my work. You destroyed everything. What about the show?

I admit that I am at a loss and I pull at the tiny slivers of thread that have come undone at the seams of the football. I am sad in myself that we are having this conversation. I tell her that what I have done is fixable, retractable.

It will make your work stronger, I say, to start at the beginning, afresh. It’s what all artists do, great artists.

I tell her that the pieces weren’t right, that they didn’t do her justice.

She gets herself together and says that she will have to ring Simon to explain what has happened.

I go into the kitchen and I don’t know how to react to this news about her phoning Simon so I start to make guacamole. I peel a red onion and the purple skin lies on the chopping board and now that it’s been taken away from the onion, what it has exposed is a paler mauve denuded bulb and it is slippery and I have to use control not to cut my finger while I am dicing it finely. Red onions do not make my eyes fill with tears the way regular onions do. I thank God for this one small act of mercy.