Sometimes I forget all about my mother. Whole days go by and I think about other things, things that leave no space for her absence. I do it on purpose: I fix my mind on other things. When I am drawing or painting I forget all about her. I forget about everything. I have to set alarms on my phone to tell me to stop and go to collect Susannah or put the dinner in the oven. And when the timer goes off, and I return to the world around me, there she is again, somewhere out in the margins, a shadowy emptiness, guilt, a door closing just out of sight, the breath of it, something like the smell of
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