‘I might travel instead,’ she said when I asked her what she was thinking of doing. ‘South. I’ve saved up some money.’ But she stayed at home and made me go to the shop and to the post office to pay our rent and electricity. She would often sit by the window on the open mezzanine, as if she was guarding the brewery and couldn’t leave her station. She didn’t mention her plans to travel again. But she looked after me too: more often than not, I would wake up with her body next to mine, moist and milky.

It was always her that came to me, but I was always the one left lying awake next to her as she slept. Her curls slipped down her cheek and her skin gently rubbed against the pillow as she snuggled to get comfortable. She would lift a knee and, as it touched my thigh, I’d feel a warm and cold shiver spread from there and out into my whole body. Mostly I would stay still and feel the rhythm of her soft breath on my neck. Sometimes I was sure I could feel little sprouts appear under the skin where she’d breathed.

The plasterboard too produced new summer growth in the house. One day I was in the bathtub, about to fall asleep reading Moon Lips:

He let his hand gently touch her soft, swelling lips …

Suddenly my hand grazed something that felt like thin soft skin by the bathtub rim. I turned around and looked straight into a white gaping eye: a mushroom, still quivering slightly from my touch, had grown out of the narrow wedge between the bathtub and the wall. The warm spores from its surface melted into slime on my fingers, slipping between the grooves in my skin.

After my bath I warmed some milk for Carral in the kitchen and imagined it was that mushroom in the pot, melting and bubbling.

‘Did you see the mushroom?’ I asked when I got back to the mezzanine.

‘A mushroom? Where?’

She held the milk mug between both hands, gently blowing on it.

‘In the bathroom, in the bathtub.’

‘Wow, no, it must’ve grown quickly.’

‘Mushrooms grow incredibly fast. They can sprout in a few hours actually.’

Carral nodded and sipped her milk slowly; as she swallowed I felt something warm, slimy white in my throat. I coughed. She turned towards me.

‘Don’t get rid of it.’ She looked serious, and added, ‘It’s handy evidence of the mould damage, for when the cleaning company arrives, I mean.’

‘OK,’ I coughed. ‘We could see how big it gets.’

‘Definitely! Is it edible, do you think?’