What could I do? I turned on the heat and put the kettle on the stove. I sat at the kitchen table and leafed through a pile of unopened mail. This silent house that was usually clamorous with child-cry and footsteps pounding on stairs, with various objects being drummed upon and the hiss of a hot iron over cotton, the silence of this house was disconcerting. Where was my family? The silence perched on my shoulders and blew into my ear. It lifted the hairs at the back of my neck. It ticked.

After I don’t know how long, I became hungry. The refrigerator contained a bottle of milk that had gone off and a hard block of cheese and a half-eaten loaf of soda bread. Cold stew gone fuzzy in a cold pot. I opened a can of oily smoked mussels and stood crookedly over the kitchen counter, spooning the mussels on to crackers and taking bites out of a wedge of the hard cheese. Dribbling oil down the front of my shirt.

I left crumbs everywhere and eventually shuffled up the stairs to bed, warming myself under the blankets with the heat of my own body.

Three more days your mother stayed away. No phone call, no letter. I thought about calling the police, but I knew I was being punished. I knew you were safe somewhere. For the first two days, I came home early from my work, expecting to find our house warm again and with a pulse. On the third day, driving past the sledding hill, I decided that I would go to your grandparents and confront them, confront your mother, because I was certain you were all there.

But you were home. She had come back. I knew this before I pulled into the driveway, because once again the windows were lit and smoke rose from the chimney. One of Tilda’s snow boots lay on the front walk and I knew why. She would have thrown one of her tantrums and had to have been dragged by the armpit from your grandfather’s car and into the house.

I opened the door to the sound of your braying and to the smell of onions being fried in butter. Tilda had barricaded herself behind a wall of cushions on the floor in the front room and you were in your high chair at the kitchen table, your face shiny and red from crying, chewed pieces of carrot drying in your hair. Your mother stood at the stove, drawing a wooden spoon slowly around the pan of onions in a kitchen that was steamed with heat and fry and noise. The radio was on but I don’t remember what was playing. It was just on.

‘Merete,’ I said.

She continued to stir.

‘Tilda’s boot was outside,’ I said.

‘She didn’t want to come in.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

Your mother swayed in motion with the wooden spoon.

‘How are your parents?’ I asked.

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Isn’t that where you were?’