I’d wished I’d brushed my teeth. They were always telling me that. Brush your teeth, they’d say and I’d say I have, I have, even when I hadn’t. Then they’d get smart and would want to smell my breath, which is totally gross. I’d say, no way, gross. And they’d say, go brush your teeth and so I would because there’s only so much luck you can push with your grandparents.

But on this day, I hadn’t brushed my teeth.

Let’s clear something up at the outset. You’re probably wondering: how can I, a bus stop in Benrath, Düsseldorf, claim to be telling this story? But there’s nothing so extraordinary about it: like many Germans, I have an excellent grasp of English. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’d like you to imagine the following scene. A woman named Gisela is trying to get home, but she can’t recall where she parked the car. Has it been stolen?

The ride into town was downhill. This meant he had six kilometres of uphill to get home after work. But if he didn’t think about the hell of going home, going in was awesome. He always tried to leave before Dad was up which was easy as given Dad’s usual state.

In a Moscow apartment that has been without hot water for days, a mother watches the Olympic opening ceremony with her husband and son. Here’s the best bit, the Parade of Nations – here comes Slovakia! Here comes Spain! Here come our guys, here comes Russia! The family cheers, and when it’s Ukraine’s turn, her son asks why their flag has such funny colours. It’s an unfortunate question to ask, but Ukraine was bound to come up eventually, so she is not so much surprised as resigned. It’s the feeling she gets when an electricity bill arrives at the end of winter.

When Inipi said, between heavy silences, that she did not want her child to be a girl, Miss Ude shook her head and insisted that she must not think of the baby in terms of gender or skin colour or ethnicity, that there was more to this child than eyes could see. She knew the child was genderless, able to take whatever form it pleased. She did not tell the mother all the things she saw. That it would have its father’s gait, its mother’s eyes, a delicate heart and hands that would mend people. That a time would come when she would need to let go of the child in its childhood; that when that time came, she would need strength.

‘They said it was in the woods.’

‘Where are the woods?’

Leni has come to visit. She answered my call. She looks around my room as though she is wondering if she is in the right place, even though I am here. The rooms and the corridors all have the same dark seaweed-green carpet. Lowest of low piles, scratchy on bare skin. With all the rooms and all the floors there must be acres of it.