I slipped out of bed and padded quietly in my socked feet across the linoleum, into the kitchen. I heard the car start up outside. I got to the window in time to see the beginnings of the dawn and Hessel driving away, back to the vet’s, I presumed. I listened for a moment. Bette’s quiet snores drifted through the thin walls. And then there was a sudden ‘snap’ – the mouse trap under the fridge going off. I jumped. I stood still, with my eyes closed, breathing, and listened for any more movement – please no more movement, please let it have been a clean kill – but to my relief there was silence. I wouldn’t look. Not right now. Not this minute. I just couldn’t.

Back in the little room I picked up Mum’s letter from my desk and retrieved my phone and took a picture of it. I returned it to its envelope then used my phone as a torch as I crept with it down the dim hallway. Outside my grandparents’ bedroom door, I paused to listen to the regularity of Bette’s breath before switching off the light from my phone and moving soundlessly into the room. I went by feel and by whatever glow still filtered in from the setting moon and the early dawn until I reached her bedside table. I held my breath as I slid the drawer open and returned the letter.

Back in my room I sat up in bed, fan heater on my feet, trying to think.

Everything was different. Was everything different?

I didn’t understand the past, that much was clear. I didn’t have the facts. Here I was, sitting on this bed, in the present, unanchored – that was what I was feeling. I was adrift. But that wasn’t what had changed. I had been aiming for unanchored – that had been my whole intention in coming here, to shake off the weights of my life that were keeping me moored, holding me back. But in allowing myself to drift here I had assumed something like a safe and clear lake. But Mum’s letter . . .

At breakfast, Bette said nothing about the night before. She seemed completely back to her Bette self, bustling about, presenting tea and toast, washing dishes. I retrieved the behind-the-stove mouse trap with its adult casualty, and as I emptied it into the bin and began to clear the table, I watched Bette, trying to understand, trying to imagine the context in which she would have received that letter from Mum – all that blame, that reproach, that anger. All that threat – stay away from my daughter.

How was I to receive that threat? When Mum wrote it, was she drunk? Was she just angry? Was she being petulant? Or did she have reasons that weren’t written down? Her letter had a face, but face value was something I simply could not count on.

Watching Bette, trying to imagine what she might know that could make sense of the letter, trying to understand the actual implications, if any, for me, I found myself noticing something else about her instead.