Auntie Annu is Dad’s big sister, and she looks after Dad, even though she teased him as a child. When she was little, she cheated Dad out of chocolates and once left him on his own in the park. But she looked us in the eye and brought us home.

At school, the teacher told the class that my mother had died. Then my classmates were allowed to ask questions. I don’t know what they asked, because I wasn’t there. I had already heard enough questions, from the police, the nurse and Dad.

Then my classmates were allowed to draw. I saw the drawings at the spring fete. The teacher passed round handicrafts and drawings for pupils to take home, but Mum’s death pictures stayed in a separate pile on her desk. They showed aeroplanes breaking into pieces in the sky, or crashing against a wall, or dropping a bomb. Someone had drawn a woman being hit on the head by a box. She had two crosses for eyes and her tongue was sticking out.

These drawings were not handed out or taken home. What could you do with drawings like that? Even my teacher couldn’t find a use for them. That’s why they stayed there on the desk.

Time stopped. I couldn’t think forwards or backwards. Someone drew a thick white line round our thoughts, and the thoughts stopped, and we got stuck there.

Every day was its own separate day that didn’t lead to anything. And every day was like the previous one. Auntie woke us up in the morning, forced us to eat three times a day and put us to bed at night. I can’t remember what the food was, but it stuck in my throat and was hard to chew. My chin was tired and I chewed so hard my last milk tooth started wiggling. Dad cried into his coffee. His tears dripped on to the surface of the black liquid. Otherwise, nothing happened.

A silence fell around Dad and me. The shopkeeper lady and the PE teacher, who was on summer holiday, hugged me on a shopping trip, but no one said anything. I remember the shop lady felt soft, and she squeezed me harder than I had expected. The PE teacher looked soft, too, because she was on summer holiday and she was wearing a dress and had flowers for her balcony in her shopping basket. Well, well, the grown-ups said again, all you can do is, what can you say, yes. Let’s hope time will heal. But time-heals was a pile of shit, and it was useless, anyway, because time wasn’t moving, and we were stuck.

Then words ran out. All that remained were sweaty policemen and classmates clutching coloured pencils.

13

13

Mum often read fairy tales. She had a whole row of fairy-tale books on the shelf.