‘And I feel cheated, Mum. Why didn’t you tell me you had a brother? That I had an uncle? That I had a cousin! Not knowing these things about you means there were things I didn’t know about me. It was selfish.’

‘I should have told you, I know I should have, but I just –’ She shook her head. The icy pole was melting onto her fingers.

‘I really do feel like I don’t even know you. I feel like you’re a stranger.’

‘I just didn’t really know how to tell you, once it had gone so far. Obviously I have really messed things up.’ She waved her hand in my direction. ‘I’ve messed you up. And now you’re pregnant.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it. And it’s okay, Mum. I’m taking care of it. I just told you because . . . I just wanted –’ but I couldn’t finish my sentence as the tears sprang and my throat tightened and Mum said, ‘Oh my darling,’ and that was just about the last thing I wanted from her right then.

I managed to choke out, ‘I’ve got the prescription for it, I was just about to . . .’

‘Does Nassim know? Is he here with you?’

My eyes stung. ‘I couldn’t tell him, I just left, and then –’ And I hiccupped and then without warning I began to sob. I didn’t know what Mum was thinking. I couldn’t read it, or her. It was all too much. She was still her, after all, still a stranger, and I didn’t know if I could trust her.

Mum didn’t reach out or try to speak over the top of my crying, and I appreciated that: for once I felt like she was just waiting me out, letting me be, seeing me, just a little.

Finally she said, ‘I want to tell you something.’ I wiped my eyes and my nose with the back of my hand and she passed me a tissue box from the side of her bed. ‘I don’t want you to feel like that anymore, Anna. Like you don’t know me.’ And she took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I want to tell you the hardest, most awful thing about me.’

I blew my nose and nodded to her, and then she said, ‘I want to tell you how I killed my brother.’

‘Killed . . .?’

‘As good as.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘In the blink of an eye he was gone. It was my fault, Anna. All my fault. I’d talked down the danger. I promised him it would be alright. I promised him, and then it wasn’t. I killed him. I killed him, Anna.’

‘No, Mum, don’t say that –’

She looked at me then, a starkness to her face I had never seen before. A vulnerability. It terrified me. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I should leave her, walk away. I didn’t owe her this. I didn’t have to know this. I didn’t have to know her.