When I walk into the kitchen, I find her gently stirring something in the deep, black, metal frying
pan. She turns towards me. “Where did you leave the children?” she asks.
I’m a little confused. There have been no children in this house for a long time. But wait, she’s looking right past me. I instinctively turn back to see if someone else is standing behind me – irrational, I know, considering no one else lives here now.
“You shouldn’t have left them alone,”she says in that clipped, angry tone and returns to stirring her empty pan on the unlit stove.