We have one of the best days. When I wake up it's not even morning anymore, and Mum is in the kitchen. There are bulging carrier bags on the table and she is making bacon and eggs and hashbrowns and she lets me drink real coffee (which is horrible, but I don't say so). All of the things that Maisie and Donald never let me have, never make, never even have in the house.

While she's cooking she sings. Then we sit down at the big chunky wooden table and eat and it is salty and greasy and good. She says, "What do you want to do today? Just say. Whatever it is we'll do it."

I don't even have to think. In the room with all the sofas there's a fireplace and I say that I want to have a fire. And so that's what we do. We crumple up magazines and post from the pile on the doormat, and we grab a bunch of tea towels from the kitchen and pile them up in the fireplace. Mum strikes match after match and it won't light. Then it does. A small, silent, yellow flame getting bigger and bigger until it's crackling roaring.

"Find stuff to burn," says Mum. "We need to keep it going."

One by one the books off the shelves go in, and the wooden ornaments, and then there are drawers full of spare sheets and clothes which we tear up and feed in a piece at a time. Mum rips open a pillow and we shovel in feathers in big handfuls. The smell stings my nose.

It's only after all those things that we notice there's a basket of little logs to one side of the fire. Neat, white logs. We use those too, but the fire is already burning big and strong. Mum gets a loaf of bread from the kitchen and we stick the slices on long forks and toast them on the fire. It's so hot in the cottage now that we don't even need our coats.

Mum drinks. There's a little cabinet full of bottles which are all different colours. Green and yellow. Dark brown. She lets me drink a little as well, but it's worse than the coffee and I can't hide the look on my face and she laughs some more. She tells me stories. Everything that's been happening while we've been apart. And I tell her about living with Maisie and Donald. Most of it, anyway. I tell her the parts that matter.

When the fire starts to go and there's no more wood in the little basket, Mum goes outside and comes back with an axe. I've never seen an axe in the real world before. We push over one of the sets of shelves and she makes me stand way back in the corner and she chops it up into little pieces. More wood for the fire. When she swings the axe you can see the muscles move in her neck. You can see her teeth. She throws the axe in the corner. She's a wild, real person. Not like anyone else. I can feel my heart crackling like the fire.

From now on, I know, every day is going to be a little bit like this one.