A Child, Drawing

A child sits in the room next door. Ella is preparing for her meeting at the UN while waiting for Kai, who’s heading to Zurich the next day for an important conference. This couple has what many would call successful careers and fulfilled private lives. They’re happy together and invest much of their energy in projects that are supposed to make the world a little better. A child isn’t what they had in mind, but now it’s suddenly here. Although the child has visited them often recently, things are different today. Today, it can’t return home to its mother. She’s dead. But the child is unaware of its mother’s death, unaware that it’s all alone in the world. The child sitting behind the door is busy drawing. But it could come out at any moment and stand there, unknowing, before Ella and Kai. What then? The child’s presence spreads quietly through the apartment like a smouldering fire, provoking urgent questions about care and welfare, social responsibility and adults’ priorities.