I went down on my knees next to her, scanning the floor first for stains or needles. In a dim part of my mind it registered that I was wearing my newest jeans and I didn’t want them ruined.

I put my hands on her shoulders, ready to get her up and onto the bed, where she could sleep it off. The same way I had done hundreds of times in the past.

Her skin was like marble; cold and unyielding. I snatched my hands away before forcing them back, my fingers working upwards to the side of her neck.

I knew there would be no pulse; I knew she was dead.

I’d known it, deep inside, when I got the phone call from Carl, though I hadn’t admitted it.

‘How long has she been like this?’ My voice was a breathy whisper, filled with the horror of what was in front of me.

Carl shifted in the bed. I looked up at him, at this pathetic man. The sheet slipped down, and he grabbed at it.

‘I don’t remember,’ he said. His voice was dull and heavy. He looked at me suddenly, a frown crossing his face. ‘When did I call you?’

I didn’t answer him. I turned my attention back to my mother. I had known that one day this would happen, I’d imagined it and, horribly, sometimes I had wished for it. But now that time had come, I found myself beset with a deep, dark sadness.

I tilted her face so she was looking at me. Her eyes were cloudy, unseeing, and her mouth was partially open in a painful grimace. What had her last words been? What had she thought about as she slipped away?

Could I have done more?

I clapped my hand to my mouth. At eighteen years old, kneeling next to my mother’s corpse in that filthy house where I had grown up, I knew that question had the potential to haunt me for the rest of my life.

I couldn’t let it. I wouldn’t. I had only just begun to live. I was starting to find out who I was. People in Edinburgh liked me. And yet it all came back to this.

Around her left arm was that old pink belt that used to belong to me. It was a brownish-grey now, years old, and it made me even sadder to look at it. Why was she still using it? In some warped, horrible way, did it remind her of me? Or had it originally just been the closest thing to hand and was simply now a habit, part of her kit, like the tablespoon she favoured?

Gently, I unclasped the buckle and removed it from her arm.

Behind me, Carl shifted. As if the belt had awoken something in him, he shuffled to sit on the edge of the bed.

‘I need my stuff,’ he said.