‘Yeeeaaah. Kelly’s a tough cookie sometimes but I don’t mind seeing them the odd weekend. Let’s just relax and try and be creative right now? That’s the life we said we wanted, isn’t it? I don’t want us to lose the mystical parts of ourselves.’ He said, ‘I’m really hungry, are you not hungry?’

He had been eating a banana in the bedroom that morning, standing there by the window, his back hairs striking out a coarse aura. I had felt a stronger sexual attraction than I have ever felt, before or since, to any human; any ape. Was this raging oestrogen? It was a valid question. My desire for a child. Where had it sprung from? Was it a desire for a lifestyle upgrade, or the wish to do what my mother couldn’t? It was an autumn feeling, that’s the best way I can describe it. That joy. That terror. That rush. That silence. That peace. That fear. Everything in a puddle and a pile of leaves. Everything dying and coming up gold. You know when you see a beautiful view and you sort of surrender to it – you feel yourself slacken and weaken, and you slouch a bit like you’re broken down. Reduced. Mortalised. Remembered. And it’s awful but it’s also … a fucking relief, you know? I want to be reduced by my biology, sometimes. I want the pressure of my higher understanding switched off. Does that even make sense?

Later, we lay in bed, our faces inches apart, breathing each other’s breath.

‘I suppose I would like to create something I didn’t have, for someone else. And myself, by proxy,’ he said. ‘But I’m scared I don’t have the necessary skills.’

I said, ‘Me too.’

‘What else do you want?’ he said.

Sometimes I think I want to walk down a school corridor in autumn-time and see sugar-paper drawings tacked to walls and recognise them. Sometimes I want that more than anything. Other times I just want to be alone with my imagination. Mostly though, I just want to not care what every single person thinks of me all the time, and I want to not have so many people’s opinions whirring round my brain, and I want to share my life with someone and not get bored, and I’m so scared that isn’t possible, because that is a lot of boxes to empty and sort. And sometimes I just want to have a shower and put on a clean pair of jeans and eat a sandwich in a café and feel like a normal fucking person.

I can’t even remember what I answered in real life.

MY MOTHER SAYS

‘Wait for it! Ooh!’

She is straddling a bottle of Bollinger. The cork pops out and we both smile in shock. She pours out two coupes. She says it as we cheers:

‘Champagne is a verb.’