Breathe, Anna.

But I couldn’t breathe – the smell. Breathing was a compromised tactic. Breathing was no good to me.

Grandma Bette moved slowly. She had taken my things away from me and put them on top of all the stuff on the kitchen table. Her hands hung in the air in front of her. ‘It’s not usually so . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I meant to get to that,’ she said, gesturing weakly towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve been meaning to, but . . .’

‘It’s fine, Grandma,’ I managed to say. ‘You weren’t expecting guests.’

The woman was just staring at me and I was just staring at the room. The urge to run was strong, but when I met her eyes again, I saw that she was smiling at me.

‘Can you just stand there?’ she said. ‘Don’t move. I’m going to get my glasses.’ She shuffled out of the room and disappeared somewhere towards the back of the house and then returned with an old pair of glasses, taped up in the corner, and perched them on her nose. Her eyes became enormous; she was like a skinny owl. And then she stood and looked at me with such a steady gaze, so full of disbelief, and almost of adoration – love, even – that I couldn’t help giggling nervously a little bit. I felt shy, like a little kid, and the warmth began to creep back into my feet and legs and hands.

‘It is such a delight to see you,’ she said. ‘It does my old eyes so much good.’ And she hugged me again, this time without the insistent tugging, and even though she still felt thin, too thin, there was a softness to her skin as I leaned down into her embrace and we brushed cheeks.

‘Is Grandpa . . .’

‘Asleep. Now, are you staying?’ she asked, letting me go to look at me again. I hesitated, trying not to look around. ‘Of course you’re staying.’ She manoeuvred me towards a little door off the kitchen. ‘And of course you’ll want to stay in here. This was your mother’s room.’

She opened the door onto a great big wall of jumbled stuff. It looked more like a disorganised storage closet than a room. All of the surfaces, including the floor, were taken up with piles of newspapers, odd collections of empty jars, small wooden planks, unmarried shoes. There was a cupboard in the corner but the doors stood ajar, unable to close on the piled contents within but also unable to open fully without launching an avalanche. Empty and full cassette cases and a bucket of bottle tops hid the top of a desk. Half the curtain rail was hung with dresses, florals and plaids and slips of lace, while even more dresses, un-hung, created a small hill behind the door. But the air was better in there. Stale, but not rancid. I surreptitiously took great gulps of it while I looked around.