“You know, I’ve never told this story before,” Sisi said. “The rest of it, I’m not even sure I know how to tell it.”

“Liam and his mother moved into the installation,” Portia said.

“Yeah. Liam’s mummy picked a house and they moved in. Liam’s just this little kid. A bit abnormal because of how they’d been living. And there are all these weird rules, like they aren’t allowed to eat any of the food on the shelves in the kitchen. Because that’s part of the installation. Instead the mother has a mini-fridge in the closet in her bedroom. Oh, and there are clothes in the closets in the bedrooms. And there’s a TV, but it’s an old one and the installation artist set it up so it only plays shows that were current in the early oughts in the U.S., which was the last time the house was occupied.

“And there are weird stains on the carpets in some of the rooms. Big brown stains.

“But Liam doesn’t care so much about that. He gets to pick his own bedroom, which seems to be set up for a boy maybe a year or two older than Liam is. There’s a model train set on the floor, which Liam can play with, as long as he’s careful. And there are comic books, good ones that Liam hasn’t read before. There are cowboys on the sheets. There’s a big stain here in the corner, under the window.

“And he’s allowed to go into the other bedrooms as long as he doesn’t mess anything up. There’s a pink bedroom with twin beds. A stain in the closet. A really big one. There’s a room for an older boy, too, with posters of actresses that Liam doesn’t recognize, and lots of American sports stuff. Football, but not the right kind.

“Liam’s mother sleeps in the pink bedroom. You would expect her to take the master bedroom, but she doesn’t like the bed. She says it isn’t comfortable. Anyway, there’s a stain that goes right through the duvet, through the sheets. It’s as if the stain came up through the mattress.”

“Uh oh,” Gwenda says. She thinks she’s beginning to see the shape of this story.