At first I didn’t understand the warm slimy stuff under my feet; then I thought the pipes had burst, like they had once before. The bathroom light flickered and flickered again, two three four times, before erupting like a sky across the room. It lit up the floor, the tiles and cupboards. Had Mother left the bath on? The floor was flooded with water. The shower curtain was pulled around the bath, but bathwater was trickling over the top. Mother’s hand poked out around the curtain. Had she fallen asleep in the bath? Silly Mother. I’d tell Papa about this, this was dangerous, she could drown. I wrenched back the shower curtain.

How do I ever unsee that scene, Ornella? How will I ever unsee Mother under the water in her bath? Her white face awkward on its neck and her grey eyes sunk beneath their lids. I can’t unsee the bottle drunk down to the base with its cap off. I can’t unsee all that water flooding over the sides of the bath and onto the floor.

I turned off the tap, but the water kept going. It just ran and ran and ran. It ran out from the bathroom to the hall and into my bedroom; it drenched, it stained the carpet and the walls; it ran down the laundry steps and into the garden. It pooled at the base of the washing line, and then it went on running, into the flowerbeds, down the gutters into the street, down onto the tramline, and on and on, all the way out to the river and into the city. It ran and ran and ran.

Lights were suddenly on that hadn’t yet been on. People were running, gates were crashing. I was in the street. I don’t know how I got there. I stood in the street and I could hear someone screaming and it was me. Voices rose in the air, there was yelling. Someone got me under my arms and lifted me high and away. Some man with a big white and red face was talking to me: quietly, urgently. There was water all over my shoes. I was looking downwards, folded like a hinge, while the man held me under the armpits. I could see the bitumen littered with shreds of paperbark, and my wet shoes, and for some reason, my hands. My hands and my arms, all wet, all wet with water. ‘It’s alright,’ the man was saying, over and over. ‘It’s alright, son. It’s alright, son.’ But who was he? I wasn’t his son. Who was he?

It took no time for the ambulance to arrive. The whole street came out to watch the lights and Mother’s body on the stretcher. They’d covered her up, right to the top of her head, so everyone knew.