But Edith couldn’t speak. She’d woken that morning, her mouth a hollow cave, empty of sound. She watched her father, his arms flailing, and realised for the first time that this silence was a room she could live in. No one speaks to a closed door. There are two parts to a conversation.

‘Do you hear me?’

No, she thought. Because I don’t want to. You can argue with yourself. Perhaps that’s who you’ve been arguing with all your life. She didn’t try to stop him when he poured another glass, his face contorted, his breath stale as he came close to her. Had she ever loved him, she wondered. She’d loved her grandmother.

Her grandmother had told her, ‘If you don’t like the story you are telling yourself, make up a different one and change the ending.’

Edith had tried to change the ending to her father’s story. Now she didn’t care. The only way to endure the rest of her life without Demetrius was to tell herself stories. Stories would be the furnishings of her silent room.

Her father’s jaws moved up and down; he had an ugly set of teeth. She was surprised at how easy it was to let go of another person’s words. They became a jumble of sound, a mass of cockroaches, click-clicking, all marching in the same direction.

‘Your feet have always dangled above the earth,’ he yelled. ‘You’ve been like that since the day you were born. You will marry the butcher.’

Demetrius, my love, when the ground has become too hard, when winter has crept into this house, when the darkness begins to fill the cracks with the ghost of a summer past, you will be in my heart, a snow song away. Never leave me.

The cabinet maker didn’t know what to make of this silent, white-haired daughter. She seemed not to care what he said to her, never showed any expression.

His mind fragmented by drink, he feared that Demetrius had become one of the bloodless. Hadn’t he sucked Edith’s voice from her? It would explain the paleness of her skin, her white hair. In fear of an attack, the cabinet maker started to wear his shirt inside out.