So I just sat there, let the room bring back a flood of memories, and dipped myself in.

The spring after I turned six, a robin had built its nest in the cluster of trees behind our house. Dad was completely elated, paternal, and guarded it vigilantly until the eggs arrived. He’d hoisted me on to his shoulders to get a look; four of them, speckled and cyan, looking impossibly fragile and wonderfully smooth. I’d fantasized about how satisfying they would have felt to hold.

We checked every day to see if they’d hatched, careful not to intrude on the mother, as per Dad’s request. But there was a storm a couple of weeks later. And afterwards, I was back under the canopy hunting for worms to roll between my fingers when I saw them: the eggs had been discarded from the nest and sat in a heap, lodged between the tree’s roots.

I looked around to make sure nobody was watching and picked up an egg, one hand on top of the other, the way I would eventually hold my first communion wafer. It was heavier than I imagined – I only had experience with the plastic, Easter variety of egg – but also smaller than it had looked before, its shape dwarfed by my palm. I turned it over to find a crack running along the length of the shell, wide enough in the centre that you could just about see inside. And I don’t know what possessed me, but suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to know what secrets it held.

I picked at the fracture. The shell chipped away easily, and the being underneath began to take shape: not quite embryo, not quite creature; wet fluff that would never grow, or feel the sun, clinging to sickly, pallid robin skin; a bruised, bloated eyelid; the fleshy beginnings of a beak. Just a blob of vaguely biological matter. It was horrible, and ugly, and I wanted to see more! But the chipping away meant the egg was no longer structurally sound, and it crumbled in my hand. The sharper fragments of shell sliced through the little blob like it was paper. Crimson blood crept from inside it on to me.

Dad had seen it all. He washed away the evidence. Let me cry in his office. There were no accusations; he didn’t scold me. But I wasn’t crying because I was afraid of the repercussions, but because I knew I had held death and that it wouldn’t come off just by washing my hands.

On Sunday, Mom entered my room without knocking and informed me I’d be going to school the next day.

‘Seriously?’ I asked.

‘Mm.’ She perched on the corner of my bed. ‘Having a routine again will be good for you.’

‘Did one of your mom forums tell you that?’ I regretted the taunting question the moment I asked. It was too much.