‘And I had to fold the duvet and put my legs around it …’

‘Like a kind of protection.’

‘I thought: anything can inseminate me now,’ I whispered, ‘anything can get into me.’

‘I know. That’s my story too.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know, but I can hear you.’

Her hip-bone stuck to my thigh. I moved my leg, but as our bodies slipped apart, I heard her body make a sound, not a normal sound, a fantastical sound, something like the sound of a nail breaking, of a bone fracturing, or flesh being torn apart. I closed my eyes and imagined damp dark beads rolling from her finger flesh, out of her mouth, her hip socket, vulva.

Carral continued: ‘Imagine if the world was like Pym’s book.’

She was so close that her damp breath wet my earlobe as she spoke.

‘You mean your book, like what you wrote in the book.’

‘Yes.’

‘In your book the tough girl would’ve been right,’ I said. ‘People would have grown together just by lying next to each other.’

When I closed my eyes, I thought that we really were in Pym’s book, and asked Carral, ‘What happened with Pym that night?’

‘I don’t know, Jo. I don’t remember that much. Just that Pym came in with me, and that I read his book while he was there, and then he was gone, Jo, he wasn’t there, and I was awake, and it was day. And I felt so sick, as though I’d devoured him, and the book, and everything that happened.’

‘In your book you would’ve done.’

I imagined Pym and Carral as I’d seen them through the plasterboard wall that night. I saw their naked bodies, Carral’s white skin and Pym’s red face. And now I could see things I couldn’t see then: Pym’s tongue dissolving and melting like cotton candy in Carral’s mouth. Carral’s body opening and devouring him, slipping over his body and covering it like a thick, soft dress. I saw this in my head with eyes closed and I saw it when I opened them, because on Carral’s skin I could see little freckles, Pym’s freckles, pushing back and forth,

there, not there, there, not there.

Her eyes were closed, and when she opened them she put her arms around me. I whispered to her, ‘Everything can come into me now,’ and she answered, ‘I’m coming.’