I tossed and turned all night, then dropped off with the dawn and was the last for breakfast; Jessica was just leaving for school with the girls as I arrived. Father had finished – he and Em are early risers, no matter how late they go to bed – but he must have received a parcel in the post, for he was carefully examining the contents of a small box. As I sat down with a plateful of calories, he got up and approached Bran with a cotton bud held out before him like a scalpel. ‘Open your mouth,’ he said. Bran looked at him with amicable blankness, but on having the tip of the cotton bud pressed to his lips obligingly opened his mouth and then closed it again firmly as though he’d been offered a thermometer. ‘Open again,’ Ran ordered. ‘And keep it open!’ Obediently Bran did so, and Father gave the stick a quick twirl and withdrew it. We watched in some surprise as he placed the bud into a little stoppered tube and wrote on the label. ‘Father, what are you doing?’ I asked.
