We’d been trying for four months. I was pissing on jumbo bags of mail-order ovulation sticks. I was taking my temperature every morning before I got out of bed. The fucking had gone. In its place was a fever. It rots the crops, that kind of monomania. It curdles the milk. I felt passive, waiting. I hate waiting. Waiting creates too much thinking time. I thought about it a lot, during that time: how I was shrinking into a wench while he was still growing into the adventure of himself.

‘Is it?’ I said, chewing my thumb.

‘You’re getting pretty … obsessive about it. Like it’s the be-all and end-all. It’s so much pressure to put us under. And I don’t want that. I don’t need it. You know, I need to be in a good headspace to do what I do. To do it well, I mean.’

‘Yeah. I just – well, it’s a project, isn’t it. I don’t like to fail.’

‘Fail?’ he said. ‘This is not a competition. Come on, let’s go and relax. Only beauty!’ he said. ‘Only beauty in my house!’

‘It’s my house.’

‘In this house! Our house! Let’s have a beautiful life, and enjoy ourselves, can’t we?’

He was still taking my picture, now and then. I posed for him. I stood. I sat. I lay. I smiled. Even when he was just snapping for fun, just for him, he’d say, ‘Smile!’ Like that. Like a fucking catcaller. But no one wants to smile all the time, do they? No wants to look like their heart is too soon made glad.

And then (are you ready?) I started posing alone, in the front room, by the bay window. I held my arm rigid, finger in mouth, pressing. I was waiting for him to come home – knowing that he would go straight to a bar after a job; knowing that I would eat another dinner alone; but still, I stood at that window, staring through another screen, waiting for love to show up.

Nevertheless.

We got pregnant. At least, I think we got pregnant. So many things happened to make me doubt it, I started to feel like Queen Victoria by the end with her succession of uterine phantoms.

But there it was, in blue and white.

In November, I sent him an emoji of a cross.

Turning Christian?

Guess again.

Woah.

Yep.

Wow.

Innit.

How do you feel?

Like I’m awaiting transformation. How do you feel?

Five.

Minutes.

Later.

Excited!!

ART SAID

‘Are you sure? Like, really really sure?’

He’d come home with presents – big cartons of juice and boxes of pre-cut fruit. I gave him the test for his own perusal.

‘Well, there you go.’

‘Yes. I don’t think these things are often wrong.’

‘I kind of wish you’d waited for me to do the test.’