‘I don’t know,’ Dad answers. ‘Something serious.’

The doctor listens to Auntie’s heart and breathing, pinches her ear and claps his hands, takes a blood sample from Auntie’s arm and looks into her eyes with a torch.

Auntie’s blood flows along a red pipe into a tube, and I memorize this thought: even when a person’s asleep, their blood moves.

‘Is it her heart?’ Dad asks from the doorway. ‘Annu’s always eaten quite unhealthily. And we’ve got a history of heart and circulation problems in our family.’

‘Her heart sounds quite normal,’ the doctor replies.

‘Will you also look into her sugar levels?’ Dad continues. ‘It just crossed my mind last night it could be sugar.’

‘Did anything particular happen before she fell asleep?’

‘A lottery win,’ Dad answers.

The doctor raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t say anything at first.

‘For the second time,’ I say from behind Dad.

‘That’s right,’ Dad mutters.

‘I see,’ the doctor answers.

‘She didn’t fall asleep when she won the first time,’ I explain. ‘We all had cake then.’

‘That’s right,’ Dad says.

‘In that case, it’s probably a reaction induced by a shock,’ the doctor said. ‘The mind needs a rest and battens down the hatches, as it were. Let her sleep. She’ll wake up when she’s ready. Put a glass of fruit juice and some easy-to-digest food on the bedside table once a day.’

Then the doctor leaves.

And so Auntie Annu sleeps on. We bring her juice, rusks and jelly. Auntie eats and drinks in her sleep. Sometimes she even opens her eyes a little, but they’re drowsy and vacant. Auntie bites a rusk, turns over and sinks into sleep, crumbs on her lips.

25

25

So I’m all alone now. Auntie sleeps, Dad fixes the barn ceiling, Mum’s dead and the summer holidays aren’t over yet.

Dad cooks bad food, like sausages still frozen on the inside. He can’t make pancakes, either. He gets a recipe off the internet, but the result is still a pulpy mess. We eat greasy, sugar-coated pancake-pulp.

Dad huffs, annoyed. ‘Must have been a bad recipe. I did everything just like it said. And these pans of Annu’s! Why doesn’t she buy new pots and pans, what with all that money she’s got? But then, there’ve been none on special offer anywhere. Still, they taste kind of…Don’t you think they taste like pancakes, Saara?’

‘I suppose.’

Dad takes to banging his feet against the bars of the bed again, and the doctor grants him more sick leave. Dad forgets to enrol me for swimming lessons; I was supposed to learn front crawl this summer. By way of consolation, he buys me a bagful of autumn clothes.