Sometimes Anton greeted his father with a hæ, but if he was lazy, which was most of the time, he’d silently extend the other foot from under the duvet to be massaged as well. Then his father would quickly pat his shoulder, still wrapped in the duvet, and would go to his own room. A moment later there would be the sound of the shower running, and then he would reach for the mug of cocoa.

It was always his father who woke him in the mornings – for as far back as he could recall, at least. He had a few fragments of memories about playing with his mother in his pyjamas back when he had been small, but her waking hours seemed to have become increasingly fewer as she had grown older. Last night she had been miserable over dinner – which had in fact just been pizza – and gave him a roasting for his bad grammar. He would certainly like to improve it, but he hadn’t understood what was wrong with what he had said. Shortly after that she had gone up to bed and was unlikely to emerge before midday. Her day had shortened to just a few hours, while the night had become longer and longer as the darkness within her grew.

It took Anton as long to drink his cocoa as it took his father to shower, shave and dress. Just as he was stretching his tongue into the mug, trying to reach the sweet, thick residue at the bottom, his father appeared in the doorway, looking at him as he knotted his tie.

‘Have a good day,’ he said.

‘And you,’ Anton replied, swinging his legs out of bed. He knew it would be better to say ‘you too’, but he enjoyed the fact that his father never corrected his grammar. That was something only his mother ever took the trouble to do.

He lifted his hands high above his head and stretched. Today he was going to go down to the cellar to look at the dynamite for a moment before going to school. He wanted to see if the strange feeling that had come over him the previous day would return. The feeling that he could do anything; that he alone was capable of changing the world.

12

‘I knew I was a kind of decoy, y’know. But I didn’t dare disobey the Boss. In this business you just do what you’re told. I had a little less than a hundred grams of some cut gear taped up in my crotch. Nothing much at all. I reckon I was supposed to be pulled. There must’ve been another mule on the same flight with a kilo or more that was properly hidden, and in all the fuss they were making when they pulled me, he walked straight through.’