My father has a wood-burning stove. It is his pride and joy. He paid extra to get a better model. It’s constructed to pull air past the inside surface of its front glass panels, meaning they never blacken or become choked with soot. They remain clear.

My father is an expert at starting fires. He selects his wood carefully, methodically, building his stock from both tradesmen deliveries and his own trips into the woods that lay beyond our back garden. He buys oak from Sid, the head gardener up on the estate; he rolls his cart up to the back of the house at night and unloads quickly without conversation. Sid keeps his collar up to the cold winter air and throws quick glances over his shoulder towards where the distant lights of the main house thread the trees with gold. The oak is dry and old as story; it burns slowly with a good heat, releasing its secrets reluctantly.

My father buys great sticks of ash from the village store, piling it into the back of his trailer and huffing it back up the hill to the house. The ash is silver and smooth to the touch; it looks manufactured, not grown. It burns green or old with a similar ferocity, generating a wall of heat like a pressure front. When it is ash burning in the stove, you can haul open the hatch and almost rest your elbows on the resulting shelf of heavy, scented air. Your eyes dry out in seconds, and so you close them and rock forward on your toes, feeling the air cushion you as it piles thickly against your body. The skin on your face tightens, and the hair on your arms frizzes away to nothing. You stand, braced against the onslaught, daring yourself to remain just a moment longer before slamming the door and trapping the djinn back in its bottle.

Other, more exotic woods, my father finds himself during his frequent trips into the world beyond our back garden. Rich pear and apple wood that scent the house with tangy sweetness or cherry, transforming our kitchen into a flowerbed in full bloom. Larch, gathered from beside the lake, sends bright sparks smartly drawn up the chimney, whereas elm smoulders slowly betraying the barest hint of a flame. Beech, yew, blackthorn, hornbeam, maple, cypress and willow - all with their own character, their own story to tell. All gathered up by my father and seasoned diligently with his battered old maul. The heavy axe head effortlessly splitting the larger logs down the middle, exposing and drying the minute tributaries within. The logs are stored under a large tarpaulin beneath a precarious lean-to by the back door that leads directly to the kitchen.

My father never talks about Esther anymore. It’s as if she no longer exists. Within days of her departure, all her paintings had been taken off the walls. The handwritten labels removed from the glass jars in the larder. Even the stencilled flowers that used to wind their way up the bannister were quietly expunged. Covered over with a layer of blue paint that was almost, but not quite, the same colour as the wall behind.

Bookshelves lay empty; dressers were left bare. Her absence was signalled by a sudden abundance of empty space. Geometric shapes on the floor, sketched out in the dust. Where her possessions had been. Where she was no more. And above and beyond the physical reminders of her passing was a stifling, palpable spiritual lack. No laughter from the stairwell. No icing sugar on the counter. No scent of flowers and rose water as you passed her bedroom door.

My father stopped opening the curtains. He stopped commenting on the sky in the evenings. He tended to his work. He became little more than the rise and fall of his chest, the rise and fall of his maul; the thump of his heart and the thump of metal hitting wood.

I dared ask him if he missed her only once. Late one evening as the light from the stove lit the room in amber and rust. He was making a show of warming his hands and his back was to me. He became so still in that moment. Like he was made of stone. Like the moon in eclipse he was all edges and bleeding light from his seams. He cleared his throat and seemed about to speak. Air rushed into the room and the fire burned brighter. I could see his face reflected perfectly in the unblemished glass. His jaw was set, his eyes far away. There was a trail of salt leading down his cheek. He scrubbed at it suddenly with the underside of his sleeve.

“That’s not important, son.”

Even now, when my father builds a fire he starts off by preparing a pyramid of young, dry wood (perhaps cypress or horse chestnut), packed in with twists of newspaper and a handful of herbs from his garden. When a flame is applied to this tiny edifice it leaps into cackling, spitting life with very little persuasion. It is then merely a case of feeding the fire with greater and greater quantities of wood, layering on ever thicker branches until it is time to lay on the really heavy duty logs. These squat amidst the flame and seem resolute in resisting the heat. They maintain their shape, merely glowing red hot and slowly turning as white as chalk. They seem impervious until you open the catch and hack at them with a  poker, whereupon all their strength instantly leaves them and they fall in on themselves with very little effort. They have made a show of strength and stability but it is just that, a show, they wear a brave face even as inside they crumble to ash.