How on earth do they fit in one bed? I suppose it’s something parents and children can do and others find hard to understand. They find peace in each other, even in awk-ward positions. There’s a kind of magic to it. The parent’s strength grows with the child’s weight; they say that even when a woman has had a caesarean, she can lift her baby and the wound can take it. Once in the library I saw a father carrying his disabled son. The boy was school age but not able to stand, even with support. They’d left the wheelchair at the bottom of the steps. The father carried the boy with ease, as if his son were a baby, as if he hadn’t even noticed that his son had grown. I watched the father as he climbed the steps, the boy in his arms, and wondered if that father’s strength would last to the end. Would his strength grow, as after a caesarean, so he’d be able to carry his son even when the boy was an adult?

The bodies of Pekka and the girl curve in the same way. Their eyes form the same lines. I hadn’t noticed before how similar they look.

In the morning, we both sit at the table, the girl and me. It seems we’re as tired as each other. We listen to the crack-ling of the breakfast cereal in her bowl. Ever since she had braces put in, she hasn’t eaten bread. That was a right hoo-ha. Amazing how helpless a grown man can look under pressure from a small, frowning girl and a couple of metal wires. ‘I won’t have them,’ the girl announced, pinching her lips together. Pekka sweated and pleaded. He went online and dug out a list of famous people who had had braces. But then, luckily for all of us, the girl got a dentist who was young and funny and also into mountain climbing. She was so impressed that the braces were no longer a problem.

‘I have a recurring nightmare, too,’ I say as I’m refilling the coffee cups.

‘Oh. What happens in it?’

‘I’m at a party and I shoot everyone there. Pekka, you, my brother and sister, my mum, everyone.’

The girl replies: ‘Oh.’

It feels like she’s looking at me properly for the first time. After a moment, she asks, ‘D’you know how to shoot in real life?’

‘No. Only when I’m dreaming.’

Why am I telling her this? Do I want to get into a bed of nightmares with them, to share whatever it is they’ve got? Do I want a black bin bag of my own, which I can stuff with things? Without any questions, without any explanations?

‘Do you know what the wishbone of a chicken is?’ the girl asks then.

‘The one you pull with your little fingers?’