six – eat raw chillies (remember to wash your hands afterwards)

I crouched in the tiny bathroom with its infinite London Tube-like tiling and inspected myself all over, ravenous to find something, a sign that would show people my sickness without me having to explain, without having to case it in language, something outward and obvious, like a kid with a Finding Nemo Elastoplast on his knee. I found one resilient tiny V-shaped tea stain of fake tan on my right ankle. Otherwise I was a washed-watercolour hanging in a cheap hotel, all white and purple, the skin barely covering my bones. Streaks of new blue bruises from the lines ran up my arms. I wished I had put on a fresh layer of tan, even just run one of those wipes over me, like I do on my ankles and wrists in winter. That would have done.

seven – masturbate and build good muscle definition in upper arms (rigid)

I was delayed once, outside a gaudy apartment block, waiting for some Irish kids to wake up from their sun holiday piss-up. The white tour bus revved and choked on its fumes. A group of women were turning wank-tricks for loose coins before Ryanair could get them for charity or Lotto cards. The women ushered their prey behind a scattering of ugly Dragon trees. The men were lured by their own devilish blood sap – a promise – like how bright orange seedpods would burst open on the tree branches. They’d return to the cracked pink pavement, with weeds shooting up between the slabs, disorientated/relieved, zipping up their fly, in the way men do, lifting their torso up and exaggerating a double chin. Some ran out bewildered, catching their bollocks in the zipper. The women squeezed short darts of bottled mineral water over the arch of their hand, just where the thumb attaches itself to the pointy finger, and continued their chats with each other over the sound of crickets and wet skin being slapped like a chicken fillet before frying. I thought about returning soon, and so I did and I bought an old house there, gutted it, and rented it out as some tattoo parlours and a large nail bar.

*

A stethoscope lay in the basket, abandoned by a young intern in a bleeper hurry. I listened to my own chest. Heard my heartbeat (heart beat) beat. Wafting from the nightstand came the smell of lavender from the mouldy basket. My mother was always reusing things.

It started out as days, not telling Alex the news. At first the words didn’t come, nor did I attempt to form them – I needed more time to figure out the language, but this had lingered to months, in the way time does.

Eight months since Magpie.

When I listened to my heart beating, pain shot through the soles of my feet, electrical energy sizzling up through my shins. It was like fish angrily nibbling my feet, Gara Rufas or the like, and then a few cheap Chinese foot-eaters started to savage me. You shouldn’t listen to your heartbeat (beat), and especially not the heartbeat (beat) of your in-utero child. It sounds like the kid’s on speed. My daughter made no sound at all. Not one. Not one small gallop stride babies make inside you. Nurse. Now. Cold jelly. All chat. Bit of cold. Now. There. No chat. Cold jelly. Wipe jelly. Silence. They warn you about the cold jelly more than any part of pregnancy or motherhood, perhaps because we are awkward with truths or because we can put language on discomfort that’s rather painless, cold jelly, sand in your socks. But of course, the worse the pain, the sparser language becomes, until eventually we pulverise it, language, and we are only left with our pain.