I run the tap, holding my hands beneath the icy stream before splashing it over my face. The shock of the chill helps to refocus my mind, bring me back to Earth. My mother was here, I know she was. I spoke to her, listened to her advice. I raise my eyes to the mirror, where my reflection stares back at me. My eyes are huge in my face and ringed with dark purplish circles from lack of sleep. My cheekbones are sharp and prominent, exaggerated by the recent weight loss, a daub of dark green paint staining the skin there. I can’t remember the last time I ate a full meal, can’t remember the last time I felt hungry. My skin is washed out, pale, almost corpse-like and my blonde hair lies flat against my scalp. If anyone looks as if they should be dead, it is me. I think of Rav’s words and try desperately to recall the last time I saw my mother before she appeared at my kitchen table just a matter of days ago. I would know, wouldn’t I? If she was dead.

She isn’t dead. She can’t be. I don’t remember a funeral – there would have been a funeral and I would have been there, as her only child. But I don’t remember it. I remember her apartment in Paris, and our last visit there when Mina was only a few months old. My mother wasn’t there, and I had wandered around her tiny flat, picking up ornaments and jewellery before laying them back in the precise spot I found them, not wanting to upset her by moving them. She is particular, my mother, and she would know if I had been touching her things. There had been a sense of loss in the apartment, a gaping hole in my heart. Rav had wanted to visit the Sacré-Coeur, the Eiffel Tower, all those touristy things that English people do when they visit France, but I had been too tired, unhappy, adjusting to life with a small child. There is a black cloud over the memory – Mina had been fractious and unsettled the entire weekend and I had ended up starting to bottle feed when we arrived home. Was it that that clouded the weekend? Or was it the absence of my mother, the knowledge that she was gone? Everything is a blur. I lean my forehead against the cold glass of the mirror, leaving a greasy smudge behind. As I pull away, I see her in the mirror, feel her breath on my cheek as her gaunt face is reflected next to mine. Agnes. She pulls her lips back in a semblance of a grin that shows uneven teeth, her stringy hair hanging limply on either side of her hollow cheeks as she moves her face towards mine, her lips forming words to whisper in my ear.