‘You can do whatever you want to get his attention. He’ll never look at you. All he wanted was to screw your mother, some pretty little piece of ass, no more than twenty-five years old, just so he could forget for a moment that he was mortal. You gotta understand, some young ass, it’s good, it’s sweet . . . But now here you are and you’re giving him the shits! It was still vaguely pleasant when you were a baby, it was cute, all that flim flam around your vintage cradle, but the fact you’re growing up makes him even more aware of his own decrepitude and that’s not so much fun anymore for the old man! The point is, you ruined everything, you’re a burden! A weight he has put down on the ground in an attempt to try to remember what life used to be like without you for as long as it takes to drink a coffee. Life without a kid. And you put up with it without doing a thing. Do something, goddamn it; anything. Come on, you fill me with contempt. You’re just a loser. But look at him, now he’s actually having a laugh with the manager while you’re there, your snout glued to his shins . . . Waaaa . . . Waaaa . . . Down there in the dust.’

I know she read all of that in my look because she made a move. Finding an unexpected handhold at the bottom of the counter, she suddenly toppled over, doing a face-plant onto the floor. There was a harrowing scream, a bloodied nose – the works! She had managed to spoil her father’s coffee and with a bit of luck his entire day once he brought her back home with a swollen face to be called an irresponsible bloody idiot by his younger other half.

‘Congratulations, that’s my girl! Just keep on irritating the hell out of him. Anything other than fucking up your own life by falling off a cliff!’

A daddy, a mummy, what the hell did I need with all that bullshit; what I needed was a loving, watchful helper. So, when Hildegarde finally arrived and found me limp and listless, I simply asked if she was ready to help me. She promised me that she, and especially her parents, who had already lost two children to Marfan syndrome, would always be there for us – and they always have been. What’s more, they knew what to do.

Aunt Hildi will never be able to have a child, but she has Juliette.