The thought of his death was as terrifying to me as it was mesmeric. I refused to believe it was happening at all until I heard the din of their final argument. The familiar chorus of whispers that quickly whipped into a frenzy. I remember preparing myself. Waiting for the clapping of the front door, the way the picture frames would shake in the hall; but the sound never came. When I left my room I found my mother bent over him, swaddling him in a blanket. He’d been too weak to stand, and it was then that I realised a balance had shifted. He was gone a month later.

It’s only when the therapist turns to me and asks, ‘Is it possible that your anger is related to culpability? A subconscious allotment of blame?’ that I begin to consider the eerie parallels between my parents’ situation and our own. I think of all of the evenings spent watching Simone at the kitchen table, listless and forlorn. My furious outbursts and subsequent late-night drives.

It strikes me suddenly that loss is a process disguised as an event. We are consumed in our grief. We see only senselessness. But loss is gradual and seldom blameless. It is the result of thousands of events that interact at an almost imperceptible, microscopic level.

When Simone begins to weep beside me I take her hand in mine. She looks tired. I think of the day that he died. How I had shaken her awake on the beach towel. How it felt as though I’d been trying to shake her awake ever since.

‘Phineas?’ I asked her. ‘Where is Phineas?’

I remember the panic in her eyes. The way she shot upright and asked, ‘Is he not with you?’

I look at the therapist and grit my teeth.

‘Phineas’s death was an accident,’ I say.

She had rested her eyes for a minute. It was a momentary lapse in judgement. But at night my body aches, my mind races. I see him wandering towards the shoreline and I ask myself why, why, why?

When she lay down was it a conscious decision?

When she closed her eyes did she feel herself slipping away?

Did she dream?

XV

I’m watching the news when the plumber arrives.

A list of yellow bullet points flashes across the screen. The newsreader states that authorities in Oregon have grounded air traffic and that the state borders have been closed. An infographic appears, showing landmass consumed by an acreage of growing red dots. It looks like an X-ray, an organ riddled with tumours.

I lead the plumber upstairs to the attic and explain the situation.

‘Notice any stains or discolouration?’ he asks, flicking the beam of his flashlight over pipework.

I shake my head no.

‘Mould or mildew?’

When I shake my head again he puffs out his cheeks, rubs the fat at the back of his neck. ‘Where’d you say you can hear it?’

‘It’s loudest upstairs. But it’s intermittent.’