When I wake I’m alone in the bed. There’s a gap between the blind and windowsill that admits a weak shaft of sunlight, which hits me in the eyes and stirs me. It’s 7.30 a.m. – not a bad time to get up.

I pad barefoot to the bathroom in defiance of the wall-to-wall carpet of chipboard tiles in the hall, the wet wooden pallets that cover the clay floor in the bathroom. We don’t have a ceiling light in here, but Sigurd set up a work lamp when he was pulling up the tiles and it’s still standing there, disconcertingly permanent. Luckily, it’s light enough that I don’t need to use the lamp.

It’s starkly functional, in the way that work lamps are, and gives off a hard white light that makes me feel as if I’m showering in the revealing brightness of a secondary school changing room. I turn on the water, let it warm up as I take off my nightgown…

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