I noticed that although she bustled about, a blur of movement and busyness, she didn’t actually make any noise. Her bustle was almost entirely silent. It was odd. And that realisation suddenly made sense of something else too. In the last few days, more than once, I had jumped to find Bette standing in the room with me, or much closer to me than she had been the minute before. As I watched her move around the kitchen, picking things up carefully, putting them down carefully, I understood why. Even the floor didn’t respond to Bette’s movement in the same way as it did to me and to Hessel, I realised – creaking and groaning on every step. It wasn’t just that she was light. I saw now it was because Bette seemed to know where all the creaks and groans were, and she was actively avoiding them.

I had seen this way of moving before, I realised. Mum did it. When she wasn’t drunk. When she was sober she moved slowly, carefully – gingerly, like a cat. She moved like she was stalking something, creeping up on it, not wanting to be heard until the moment she pounced – on the dishwasher, the kettle, the buttons on the microwave.

The sense of oddness grew until, watching her, this silent bustling of Bette’s felt all wrong. It was completely and utterly strange. It seemed . . . sinister. She was a woman on mute.

I had assumed a safe and clear lake but here, now, the water seemed deeper and murkier than I could have imagined. To be unanchored, here . . . what did that mean? I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.

Bette’s fingers had been broken. Who had broken them? There didn’t seem to be that many options.

‘Grandma?’ I said.

‘Mhmm?’ She didn’t look up from the sink. I didn’t know how to start that conversation. I couldn’t start it.

‘What was my mother like as a kid?’ I asked instead – a whole other complicated subject, in light of the letter. ‘What was she like at my age?’

I watched as Bette took a suds-covered wooden spoon out of the sink, laid it carefully and silently on the rack, and stepped, in a considered way, to the bench where some dirty plates lay on the chopping board. She lifted the board and stepped smoothly back in front of the sink. And then she lifted each dish carefully into the water, without any clatter or splash.

My grandmother didn’t turn around. ‘Stubborn,’ she said. ‘Ungrateful.’

I escaped as quickly as I could across to Bromley Cairn and sat on the old mattress on the floor, staring at the photo of Mum’s letter on my phone. I couldn’t make it make sense. I couldn’t make it give up its meaning. Nothing here made sense. Nothing in me made sense. All the lines had gone, and I needed them. I needed those lines to know what to do, to know what was right, who was right. It all felt exhausting, and overwhelming. I hadn’t slept all night, so now I lay down and rested my head on my arm and stared dumbly at the wall and watched as the winter sunlight moved through the room, the shape of the window, stencilled in white gold, travelling slowly across the floor.