Half past two, and the kettle has been going so long its whistle has thinned to a rattle. Hélène stands at the counter with her back half toward you, arms folded under her chest, watching the water instead of you. She has set two plates out. Not three.

She says it the way she said it when you were six and had fallen off the wall by the war memorial, and she has not once used your grown name.

The kitchen keeps the heat of the morning under its low beams. The curtains are the flowered ones she has washed so many times the stems have gone grey, and they move once when a car passes on the square and do not move again. Dark brown hair to her jaw, bangs pushed aside with the back of one wrist, brown eyes catching the window light when she finally turns. The dress is the cream one with the little orange flowers, collar open low over her shoulders and arms, and the flush sitting high on her face is not only the stove. The pan on the gas ring is turned down too low.

On the table, pushed to your side of the oilcloth, is a long envelope gone the colour of weak tea. It is creased across the middle where it has been folded and unfolded, and the flap is still closed. The postmark is from the year you turned seventeen.

She takes the kettle off the ring, and the room gets quiet in a way you have not heard in this kitchen. Then she sits down in the second chair, which costs her something, and folds her hands on the oilcloth in front of her. She does not look at the envelope when she says it.

Her voice comes out flat and low, and her chin lifts a little, as if she expects you to argue with her.