'Through the thin plaster wall I can hear her breathing in the adjacent bedroom. Most nights it’s a faint hum but occasionally her breath morphs into a gravelly snore that is slightly alleviated by earplugs. Living with my mother triggers intimacies I wasn’t expecting, but also deepens our relationship. Coffees before work and conversations in the courtyard pull us even closer. But there is a small feeling that I am doing something unacceptable. Returning home at 33 is often considered strange, like something went wrong. When the writer Maggie Nelson contemplated living with her mother she wrote, ‘I flashed momentarily upon the ghastly scene in the French film The Piano Teacher in which Isabelle Huppert sleeps nightly with her mother in the same bed’. ' (Introduction)