It is raining outside—how pleasant to be at home—a scream shatters the silence.

Heavy rain is falling outside; as I never carry an umbrella, I avoid getting wet by inserting my key into the front-door lock just thirty seconds before the downpour begins. My daughter is at home; we greet each other enthusiastically and she immediately reports that she is hungry. I am hungry as well, but it is still too early for dinner. We tuck into stale slices of pizza, leftover dry bread to spread with jam, a vegan apple cake made by one of her friends, dark chocolate, and warm Coca-Cola. The cats look at us, puzzled; they look at me in particular, puzzled. They had not seen me for some time and had already taken my spot in the kitchen, reshuffling the entire hierarchy. I’m back, I say, move over, and I open my laptop at my usual spot. They protest, but deep down they’re happy because they love new things, and my bag is full of odd bits and bobs: books, jams, little bottles of water from the train, two caps, a jar of coffee, a thick jumper, a scarf – all things they can burrow into to explore. The distant purring reminds me that being home means voices, music, a scratched sofa and requests for money. I ask my daughter where her brother is; naturally she does not know—and why should she?—he is probably out and about as usual. All right, but it is pouring with rain. “Mum, your son isn’t three years old; at worst, he’ll just get wet.” I just say that every time he gets wet, he catches a cold that lasts seven years and leaves seven quintals of crumpled paper tissues in every corner of the house, but it doesn’t matter.

I write, I eat, I concentrate, I lose focus, I check what’s on at the cinema, I realise I don’t have the energy, I give up; at a certain point, I hear a key in the lock. My heart skips a beat – it must be ten days since I last saw this once-aloof boy who’s decided to turn his life round by making his bed in the morning before going to school. The previous postulate prevented him from doing so: he maintained that the bed should be left unmade, not only as a matter of energy saving (I’ll be sleeping here again tonight, so why bother myself in the name of these bourgeois superstructures?), but above all for hygienic reasons. In fact, in his original view, the duvets create a damp environment beneath the sheets that is ideal for the proliferation of germs and bacteria. Forty-eight hours ago, he decided that the postulate—which, by its very nature, is unprovable—had lost its validity, or perhaps he had succumbed to bourgeois superstructures; I do not know, but every morning I ask for a photo of the bed, taken from the side, and seeing that tucked-in duvet cheers me up immensely.

Nevertheless, I hear the door opening, I hear two footsteps as heavy as a buffalo’s, I hear the sound of a rucksack being flung to the floor – all sounds etched into my heart – and I rise from my chair to run towards this hero of youth and protest who, at almost eighteen, has started making his bed. I am thrust back into my chair, however, by a blood-curdling, almost primal scream, containing a curse I have never even thought of in my entire life and which I will not repeat, not even with synonyms or euphemisms. I hear my daughter whisper: ‘Look, Mum’s here; she’s going to go mad now.’ Moments later he strides into the kitchen, completely soaked, with water marks under his shoes. He smiles—or rather, laughs: ‘Hi Mum, how are you? I didn’t know you were already here. Everything all right?’ Do you always come into the house like this when I’m not here? No, Mum, only when it’s raining really hard. Come on, calm down now and come and see how middle-class my bed is.