She leaned against the wardrobe and stepped out of one shoe and then the other by using her toes as a boot jack. I recognised the right angle her shoes formed on the hallway floor. She had always taken her shoes off that way and now it seemed like a sign she was back. Though of course I didn’t have time to think about that at the time. At that moment, I was focusing all my attention on the grey figure hunkered down on her shoulder.

‘Have you walked through town with him like that?’

She walked straight to the guest room without responding. It wasn’t ready yet. The ironing board was out and sitting on it were piles of laundry I hadn’t had time to sort out. She sat down on the chair by the desk and put her foot on my exercise ball, rolling it back and forth while glaring at me all the while; the animal on her shoulder glared too.

‘Would you like me to get out the air mattress? If you want a rest.’

‘Yes, that would be great.’

Roland appeared in the doorway. Susso and he nodded to each other and I noticed that her treating him so coldly upset me. But I quickly tidied that anger away for fear the squirrel would sniff it out and scratch out God knows what kind of aggressions.

‘Would you mind fetching the air mattress?’

After he had shuffled off, I went into the kitchen and made coffee. Not because I wanted any but because I had a strong need to put my fingers to work and distract my mind.

Susso followed, of course. She sat down at the kitchen table and flipped through the paper. Where the squirrel was I had no idea, but it wasn’t important. I sensed she had already caught hold of the thread that would eventually lead all the way to the empty grave in her garden. I had been here before. Minor invasions of my privacy and major ones. The worst one was when she interrogated me about my divorce and all the misery that followed in its wake. That was down in her flat, and it was probably the last time I set foot in there. With the squirrel as an undisclosed participant, she pumped me for one grim detail after the other. She pecked at me like a woodpecker, and the thoughts I least wanted to put into words, the insects that had crawled furthest into the wood, those were the ones she licked up first. It was bewildering and horrifying, though the horrifying part didn’t hit home until afterwards. She found out things I believe no daughter should know about her mother, or her father for that matter. That being said, I think it affected me more than it did her and since that day, I find talking to her unpleasant.