She wouldn’t meet her daughter’s eye.

As if she hadn’t heard, she looked down and carried a mug of hot milk over to the dining table. ‘How does it hurt?’ she asked.

Then her mother yanked off the red apron she was wearing over her work clothes – a trouser suit – and draped it over a chair.

‘The same as always,’ Kokoro said in a small voice, but before she’d managed to finish speaking, her mother interrupted.

‘The same as always? But you were fine until yesterday. The School we visited isn’t like your public junior high, you know. You don’t need to go every day, there are fewer children in each class, and the teachers seem so kind. You said you’d go. But now you’re telling me you won’t?’

Her mother obviously wanted her to attend. The sudden accusations made that clear enough. But Kokoro wasn’t feigning illness. Her stomach really was killing her.

When Kokoro didn’t reply, her mother shot an irritated glance at the clock.

‘Ah – I’m going to be late,’ she said, clucking her tongue. ‘So – what do you want to do?’

Kokoro’s legs felt paralysed.

‘I can’t go,’ she said.

It wasn’t simply that she didn’t want to go. She couldn’t.

When Kokoro was finally able, with great effort, to mutter a response, her mother let out a huge sigh and grimaced, as if she too felt a twinge of pain.

‘Is it only today you can’t go? Or are you never going to go?’

Kokoro couldn’t say.

She wasn’t going today, but she had no idea if, the next day, she might not have a stomach ache again.

‘OK then,’ her mother said, and rose to her feet. She picked up the plate with Kokoro’s breakfast and threw it in the triangular waste collector in the corner of the sink. ‘So no milk either? And after I heated it up for you,’ she added, and poured it down the drain without waiting for a reply. A burst of hissing steam rose up from the hot milk, quickly vanishing under the sound of tap water.

Kokoro had planned to eat it later, but before she could get a word out the toast and milk were history.

‘Could you please move?’ her mother said, brushing past Kokoro, sitting motionless in PJs. She disappeared into the living room. After a few moments, Kokoro heard her talking on the phone. ‘Good morning, this is Mrs Anzai.’ Her earlier testiness had gone, replaced by a formal, polite tone.

‘Yes, that’s correct,’ she heard her mother say. ‘She says her stomach hurts. I’m so sorry. When we visited the School, she seemed so enthusiastic to start. Yes, that’s right. I apologize for any trouble.’