‘It’s a wooden house – it needs to be lived in,’ Auntie Annu says. ‘Otherwise it’ll start getting damp – you know that as well as I do.’

‘No,’ says Dad.

‘You can live in the manor house, no problem.’

‘We’re not going to stay here for good.’

‘Can’t we just go and clean the guttering?’

‘I don’t want to go there. For God’s sake, is it so hard to grasp?’ Dad suddenly starts to shout at the top of his voice. Even Auntie Annu is startled. ‘I don’t want to see that house, I don’t want to see that garden. I can’t look at the garden, because I can still picture my wife there without her head, OK? What is so hard to understand about that? What? What is so hard?’

One, two, three.

Time passes; Mum moves backwards.

The clock on the manor-house wall.

Mum’s head. Mum without a head.

What is so hard?

My thoughts lose their grip. I can’t stop them; they start fizzing like a peppermint when you drop it in Coca-Cola. We did that experiment with Dad once, and all the Coke fizzed out of the bottle. Dad protected me and dropped a tyre on me.

I slide out of my chair and slip upstairs. I bet Dad will start falling apart and trembling again, and soon the stove will howl. I worry that someone will come after me; I don’t want anyone right now. So I go and hide in the library. I shut the door and jump up on to the windowsill and sit down behind the curtains.

Outside, it rains and rains and rains. I press my forehead against the window and close my eyes. I keep drawing a white line, round and round.

There are no books left in the library at the manor house. An old wooden desk stands in front of the window. Three armchairs and a sofa form a circle in the middle of the room. Gentlemen can sit in them, reading newspapers and smoking. There are overflowing ashtrays on both the coffee table and the desk. I get a whiff of tobacco from the windowsill. The thick velvet curtains have been absorbing it for years.

If a murder were ever committed at Extra Great Manor, this is the room where the detective would invite the guests to take a seat, as he always does at the end of the episode.

‘Calm down, mademoiselle, there is no need to worry,’ he says, drawing the velvet curtain aside. He pats my hand and points at one of the armchairs.

I shake my head and back into the corner of the windowsill.

‘Mum hasn’t got a head!’ I cry.

‘Mon Dieu! Everything is bound to have an explanation,’ he says. ‘And there’s a time for everything. And now the time has come to reveal the truth.’