Auntie does cry. She sheds tears without always noticing it herself. She cries many times a day. Auntie cooks and heats up stoves. She dashes to Sawdust House, to the shop, to the undertaker’s and back in the car. She holds me on her lap and dresses me in woolly jumpers. And above all, Auntie felts wool in her workshop. She rubs, thumps, throws around and rolls up large pieces of wool. Water and soap splash, stuff becomes felt, it shrinks, tightens and strengthens. Auntie’s tears fly.

But she’s still in one piece.

‘Wool helps,’ Auntie Annu assures us.

She dresses us in woollen jumpers and woollen socks. She makes our beds with sheepskins and woollen blankets. We even have cushions covered in sheepskin. Auntie believes that the sadder a person, the warmer they must be kept. And Dad and I are really sad. Our foreheads drip with sweat as Auntie heats stoves, makes soup seasoned with chilli and takes care we don’t remove our woollen jumpers.

‘Wool breathes. It keeps you warm even when it’s wet; airing makes it clean; it doesn’t smell; it heals wounds, ear infections and athlete’s foot. Just think of Inuit babies! They’re wrapped in wool and kept in those swaddling clothes with their wee and poo for a whole month. You can’t go changing nappies in that sort of cold. And when the swaddling clothes are cut open a month later, they’re not even dirty. That’s the wonder of wool!’

‘Was there something I could have done?’ Dad goes on in the stove, after a while, in a smaller voice.

‘No,’ Auntie Annu answers.

‘If I had been in the garden then, I might just have got there in time. Say if I had pushed Hannele…’

‘You couldn’t have.’

Auntie Annu’s replies thud, as wet wool does when she throws it on the floor. Despite the wool and Auntie Annu, Dad goes on and on, night after night. He creaks and drips like an icy mass on a tin roof, until he starts to fear the loosening of his feet and hands.

Dad claims there’s something wrong with his nerves, because sometimes he can’t feel anything in his feet or hands.

‘I’m getting brittle,’ Dad splutters, squeezing his toes.

Dad’s broken. It happens so easily. Mum’s image has got to Dad’s brain, and now the only sound it makes is why why why. Dad’s got a hole in his head and a lump of salt in his chest, and now he’s getting brittle. I didn’t know that could happen to a living creature.

Sometimes, ice is so cold it burns your hands.