My mum stretches out her arms in front of her and looks at their color, and then draws them back into her body and blinks as though resetting her mind, forgetting what she has just seen.

“What’s your name?” Mum asks.

I sit on her bed and put my head in my hands. “Lydia, Mum,” I say. “You know this.”

“Lydia. What a pretty, European name,” she says. And then she adds, quietly, “My daughter was called Lydia.”

“I’m your daughter,” I say.

My mum shakes her head. “My daughter died. Soon after her birth.” Her accent has changed. It’s still British, but no longer posh. It’s my mum’s voice.

I take my rucksack off and unzip it. I take out a large lunch box I bought yesterday and filled with some of the dried pig blood. It looks a bit like gravel. It doesn’t look appetizing. I stand up. “I’m putting this in your cupboard, okay? It’s your food.”

My mum ignores me and carries on talking. “I couldn’t save her,” she says. “She wouldn’t eat. She had a problem with her blood. She went blue.” She’s looking across the room toward the painting of the cow as if in that painting is depicted her past. “Isn’t it awful? I couldn’t even save my own daughter.”

“Mum,” I say. “Will you listen to me? This is your food. It’s important.”

“She died in my arms.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I say, and I put the lunch box down on the counter, which also has a small electric kettle, a microwave, and some microwavable containers and mugs on it. What a miserable place, I think. Every room here is supposed to be equipped with a bathroom, cooking supplies, a fridge, a kitchen; but this feels like an extreme reduction of what a kitchen is. Like a kitchen that has shed every identifiable feature until only its bare bones are left. I turn to my mum. But I find I can’t bear looking at her, while she looks so sad, while she is essentially grieving for me. I close my eyes.

“She didn’t die, Mum,” I say.

“I failed as a mother.”

“Mum.”

“Lydia!” she snaps.

I open my eyes. “See, you do know who I am, then!” She’s looking at me and it’s clear she recognizes me. Her expression is the same as when she used to tell me off as a teenager. We just stare at each other for a moment. But then that expression fades and her face is blank again, and she says, in a posh British accent, “What a pretty, European name.”

I let out a long sigh. Then I pick up the lunch box again and say, “This is your food.”

“Food?”

“Yes, it’s for you to eat, once you’ve finished what’s in your fridge.”