‘Oh, there will be. And then it starts to nag away at me, the eight millionth time that I’ve got baby shit under my nails and haven’t put my lipstick on for weeks. Didn’t you used to be someone? Wasn’t that you, causing a storm on Top of the Pops? Didn’t music magazines queue up to interview you, all these geeky boys in band T-shirts basically Morse-coding I LOVE YOU into their notepads? Didn’t you used to care about things beyond the PTA or the baby’s shoe size or whatever mummy shit fucking mummies have to care about? Didn’t you used to fight things and stand up for folk and try and make something happen, some change in the world? See, cos I’ve got nobody else to think this through with. It’s just me in the house, all those days, all those nights. This is what I keep playing over and over and NO. SHUT— sssh. Let me talk. Please. While the walls are closing in on me, your world is going to be getting bigger and bigger. Because we both know you’re going places, aren’t you, my darling. Danny Mansfield is on the up. The famous people you’ll be meeting. The parties you’ll be going to. Sometimes the parties are at our house, by the way, because it’s nicer than everyone else’s, and our wee boy sits there at the top of the stairs listening to the basslines and the laughter floating up. You think to yourself when you catch him, scoop him up in his jammies and take him back to bed, this is great. Isn’t he lucky to have this sort of experience? You think that when you cuddle him for half an hour before bed, or pat him on the head before you go out to work in the morning. You think that when he clings to your legs when you come in the door every evening, not realizing that he’s trying to tell you Don’t leave me again, Daddy, don’t leave me with this woman, this wretched bitter witch who stares at me all day.’

He decided to stop it all, all the words.

‘Babe. Babe. This is silly. This is just so you. We take some sort of step, any sort of step at all towards something new and you dig your heels in, the panic sets in, and you come up with a million different reasons why it’s not going to work straight away.’

She sniffed. A big, deliberate sniff. The sort of sniff he knew too well.

‘Wait, what is this right now? Like a cokehead rant happening here. Are you on something? Are you seriously pregnant with my child and on something?’

She leaned back.

‘No and yes.’

‘What? What the hell is that supposed to mean?’