This itching and the blanket too heavy on my chest, if I could shift myself I’d move over, put my weight on the other side because it feels as though all the flesh has melted and left just the bone, and the bone is aching, but I’m pinned down, there are no hands now, just the air and I’m stuck in it, my eyes are glued shut and the voices blur and merge and I can’t get at anything I need, can’t open my lips, this throat so dry – surely someone could do something. If she loved me she’d come and sort it all out. She’d find a way to stop the pain. But she doesn’t. Never, never, never. It was all lies. Jim tried to warn me. He said I should be careful. He said Take it from me Arthur, these women always turn into their mothers. But not so soon. The coldness. Always pushing me away. I should’ve known and now this. Sitting against the bathroom door in the hotel room with her crying on the other side. Singing to her to try and get her to come out but she won’t say anything. She won’t tell me what’s the matter. I try Sam Cooke: At first I thought it was infatuation, but oooh it’s lasted so long, Pat Boone and the Banana Boat Song. It always makes her laugh. My awful accent. A beau-ti-ful bunch of ripe ban-na-nas! I clench my fists. I want to break the door down. It’s ridiculous – our wedding night and I’m sitting on the floor singing about tarantulas. This is what she’s reduced me to. It’s a terrible mistake, there’s no universe inside her, just the promise of it. Stringing me along all this time, the frigid bitch, making me think there was more to it – looking down her nose and correcting my grammar. I think of Rosie Clifton, with her dark straight hair scraped up, giggling while she let me undo her buttons. Shake my head. The lock unclicks. Push myself up off the rough carpet, the pattern of it imprinted into my hand, one of my legs buzzing with pins and needles. I drag it across the lino and wait for the pain. I’m bleeding she says and looks me straight in the eye. Her face is raw with crying. There’s no blood anywhere. Nothing makes sense. I tried to work it all out but I’m not regular, I never have been, I get these pains – I don’t know what to say so I just hold her and this seems to work, this seems to be the right thing to do. And it’s not the end of the world anymore. Just women’s stuff. Things are postponed, not cancelled. I rub her back a bit and offer to buy her a nice big bag of chips.