The shower was meant to help me wake up – surely not to put off the discussion. As the thin tilted storm drummed on my scalp, a kitchen aroma crept through the steam. I joined Roy to find he’d made a decent job of sausages, each of which poked out of the bivalve of a roll. While I was pleased he’d volunteered, I sensed he was anxious to get the task out of the way so that I wouldn’t delay talking. “Tell me what you’d like to hear,” I said.

“What really happened to your aunt?”

“I thought you’d have read that.” This felt like an attempt to deny responsibility for his knowledge, and I said “Supposedly she felt she’d taken her vision as far as she could, and that’s why she volunteered for the drugs trial. It turned out they gave her the highest dose of anyone, and she said she saw new meanings in the world.”

“I read she felt her brain was opening up like a flower and her eyes were blossoming as well.”

“Just remember it was a controlled experiment run by experts, and even that may have gone wrong for her.”

Roy looked amused by my sally at an admonition. “Didn’t you ever take anything, dad?”

“I may have smoked a bit of pot when I was at university.” Although this minimised my experience, parenthood had lessened my liberalism. “That doesn’t mean you should,” I said, “and I hope you aren’t and won’t.”

When Roy opened his mouth I thought I’d prompted a confession, especially since he didn’t speak at once. “I wasn’t asking about that part of her life,” he said. “I meant the end.”

“She died in a fall, Roy. She fell off a tower block.”

“I know all that. How, though? Why?”

“Barbare, she’s the owner of the gallery that first took Thelma on, she thought Thelma may have been looking for new ideas. She was seen elsewhere that day, so Barbare assumed she was scouting locations. She always took a sketch pad in her car, and it was there when they found her.”

“Don’t you think that’s wrong? If she went up the high rise, why would she leave that in the car?”

“Maybe she’d have fetched it if she’d found anything worth sketching. Maybe she went up to look for places around the block.”

“Do you think looking made her fall?”

“Nothing else that I can think of.” Just in time I saw I’d almost missed the chance to say “Unless the drug did. Some people think they can fly.”

“That was years after she took it, though.”

“People can have flashbacks years later.” It occurred to me that my panic yesterday in Third Mile Wood had felt not unlike a cannabis experience, and perhaps I’d just explained it to myself. “Maybe she had one on the roof,” I said.