When my mother rang me on my phone at school, I was playing Bach’s Chaconne in my head, imagining the movement of my fingers. It was the virtuoso piece I was going to play if I got to the finals of the Menuhin Competition, which is this really big deal contest I’d been selected for – one of twenty-two chosen in the world. As soon as I answered and heard her tone, the music stopped. It never started again, not really.

The whole time my mother was speaking, I was looking at the coffee machine in the common room. It was a Gaggia, because that’s the kind of school I went to. It had a scratch on its right-hand side and a two-nozzle espresso system. It was silver. Behind it was a window with a hand-shaped smear on it and, on the other side of the glass, a chestnut tree, with a girl juggling brightly coloured balls underneath it. There was one cup of coffee, half full and cold, on the formica table. Just to my right, there was a single chip in the formica.

There was a pigeon strutting on the windowsill. It was 11.16 a.m., according to the clock on the microwave next to the Gaggia coffee machine – and the microwave was a Samsung, with a tomato stain on the inside of the glass, most of the buttons worn away, apart from the one that said 360 watts.

I still can’t not see those things; I can’t forget them. And ever since, I can’t look at a Gaggia coffee machine in a café, or a Samsung anything, without seeing what happened next. It’s, like, you know when you see your own phone, or your own coat? It’s just a phone. It’s just a coat. It’s an object; it doesn’t mean anything. But because it’s yours, there’s a kind of glow that it has. It has meaning, a link, a light from within, which comes just from the connection that you have with it.

For me, it’s the same with those brands. It’s just a Gaggia coffee machine, just a Samsung microwave to other people, but for me it’s lit, it’s glowing – every one, every time, whether it’s in a coffee shop in London or in an advert. Those things have meaning now. They have this sort of sick lustre of significance, and will never lose it, the same as if you sold your car but saw it again on the street; there would still be a light on in it, making it different to all other cars. But this is not a happy glow.

And even Farouz could see it, even Farouz. When I was telling the story, he knew what was going to happen when my mother said that about looking after my dad, and doesn’t that show what a moron I am, what a waste of space?

I am a disgrace, because even Farouz, who was a pirate from Somalia, who had never even met my mother, knew what happened next.

My mom went to work after speaking to me, after repeatedly telling me to look after my dad, after essentially telling me what she was going to do. After I didn’t listen, after I didn’t understand, she went to work in the trendy buildings where her science magazine was based and, instead of going to her office, she took the lift to the top floor and walked across the roof – it has shingles, I have been there, I have inspected it – and she threw herself off . . .

flew, for just a moment . . .

and was she scared, was she frightened, did she wish she hadn’t done it? I don’t know . . .

then hit the ground, and was taken to hospital by ambulance, where they gave her 5.7 litres of blood, and tried to set her broken ribs and collarbone and leg and hip, tried to restart her heart three times using a combination of palpitations and shocks at increasing voltages – I saw the medical report, it was on my dad’s desk, and now I can’t ever, not ever, forget it – until, eventually, they had to give up, after the defibrillators kicked for the final time and, at precisely 14:01 and 45 seconds on the 22nd of July 2006, according to Dr Hafaz, who signed the certificate with a semi-legible scrawl, she died.