I hesitated for a second before taking the place that has always been my mother’s, but the table had been pushed up against the wall and the place where I used to sit as a child had been squashed flat. I was struck by how strange it felt to sit there on my mother’s chair, wrong really, because for as long as I can remember we had all had our set places at the table: my father and I against the wall, my mother across from my father and my sister next to her.
