The whole business of it. This whole business of mothers and children. It was such pot luck. I never want to be disappointing pot luck for someone else, never. Because that hurt. I knew how it hurt. I felt it with the weight of a stone falling in water. Maybe if we’d been different, my mum and me, maybe then . . .

Mum, why now? Why did you so comprehensively let me down right now, right now, when I need you the most?

I squeezed my eyes shut tight against the sight of the hatchback driving away up the road.

And when I couldn’t hear the car anymore I opened them again. It was gone, as if it had never been there. The road stretched away to its vanishing point, empty, and while the wind carved patterns in the grass, I stepped down off the porch and walked straight across the gravel to the old house. To Bromley Cairn.

15

‘Is it from Dad?’ I asked Mum, referring to the letter. I don’t know why I thought it might be. I had never known either of my parents to send letters before. They were a very digital couple. Mum, standing there while Nassim looked uncertainly between us, just stared at me: she stared straight at me. ‘Mum? Is everything alright, Mum?’

And then she turned suddenly away from us and opened the fridge. She said nothing and she did nothing, just stood there with the fridge open.

The silence was strange. She swayed on her feet. I turned to Nassim, who I could see was pretending not to have noticed that something was up. He must have realised her state. He was onto her now. Onto both of us.

‘So,’ said Nassim, very clearly scrambling about for a new subject of conversation. ‘It must be nice for you, Cathy, to have your own family a bit closer than Holland. Close enough to keep an eye on. Not to have to travel or to worry so much? Like Mr Krause.’

Mum didn’t respond. This was mortifying. How could she have done this to me? Got herself so sideways drunk, so quickly, in front of Nassim? I had never done this before, brought a boy home, and she couldn’t even lay off for one moment – in fact, she seemed to have gone even harder.

Nassim was still trying. I wished he’d stop. ‘And do you have siblings like Mr Krause, too? I imagine they are a great comfort when your parents are getting older and needing more care.’

Any other parent at this point in time would be so impressed by him, they might even feel quite chuffed at his level of personal interest. I could even see Mum in a different moment, in a different state, just loving it, and loving him. But right here, right now, she just closed the fridge without getting anything out and turned back to us with a completely alien expression on her face.