“Chips?”

“Yeah.”

Brendan does not eat chips. For starters, there’s the small matter of his cholesterol. Six points it was, at his last checkup. Not staggeringly high by any means, but still, significant enough. And Brendan is careful about what he eats. Or should I say I am careful about what he eats. Left to his own devices...well, I’m not sure because I always leave portions of dinner in Tupperware containers in the freezer if I’m not going to be there, except there aren’t any at the moment because I am supposed to be there.

“Are you staying the night?” I say.

“Yes. What time will you be home?”

“You’ll have to make up your bed, I’m afraid. There’s a pile of freshly laundered sheets in the hot press.”

“Mum, look, there’s something going on, isn’t there?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Dad was sitting in the rocking chair when I let myself in. The place was in darkness. And when I asked him where you were, he got all vague and evasive.”

My heart is racing.

I should be more prepared for this conversation. I should have thought of something to say. Some excuse for my absence. Written it down. Memorized it.

I picture Kate, pacing in our kitchen, twirling a strand of her long brown hair around her fingers, working a piece of gum around her mouth, straightening the framed photograph of my mother that hangs on the wall there. Always on the move, my Kate. Even when she was a baby. Always turning the page of the book before I had finished reading it to her, The Owl Babies, Horton Hears a Who, Rumpelstiltskin, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

When I’d get to the end, she’d turn back to the beginning so I could start again, her small, pink fingers reaching for the corner of the page, already thinking about the next bit of the story.

And Brendan. Sitting in the dark. On my rocking chair. He never sits on the rocker. He says it gives him motion sickness. He sits on his own chair. With the lights on.

Down the line, the silence stretches. Expands. Kate is a listener rather than a talker. Anna talks nineteen to the dozen. I find our conversations soothing, Anna talking at full tilt and me nodding and saying Really? and Oh! and Hmmm at intervals, just so she knows I’m still there. Still listening.

Iris mutters a word under her breath and taps-taps-taps on the screen of her iPad, looking pleased. I’m guessing a triple points word.

Dad lifts his head, turns it, and settles it on his arms again.

I take a breath. “The thing is, Kate, I’ve gone away for a few days.”

“Gone away?” I might as well have said I’ve flown to the moon, such is the degree of incredulity.

“Eh, yes.”

“But you never mentioned it.” Kate sounds suspicious. And it’s true that I am not someone who goes away. And certainly not without mentioning it. “Where have you gone?”