Mark sat in his bedroom, head full of the raucous beat of The National, staring through the half-open blinds at a squirrel doing a kamikaze leap from tree-branch to shed roof. It’d been over an hour since the blow-up with Mum. He pulled out an earpiece. Yes, he could still hear her in the kitchen, rattling crockery, banging cupboards, and there, the distinctive sound of a metal spoon scraping round a metal pan.

‘Wooden spoon,’ he said under his breath. ‘Use a wooden spoon.’

She was doing it on purpose, breaking the rule. Dad’s rule: Never use a metal spoon in a non-stick pan. All the pans were non-stick. At least she’d stopped slamming doors. Mark switched tracks on his iPhone, needing something louder, wanting the beat to encase him, to wrap him up and block out the world. He pushed the earpiece back in.