‘Babe. I’m so sorry,’ I say and I know from her face that I’m not supposed to react like this either. Why am I apologizing? ‘Look, I’m just so honoured, so honoured, I don’t even know what to say.’

‘Say you’ll do it,’ she says. She holds out the wet bedpan.

I wrap each of my hands into a pristine white towel.

The cotton is very soft on my skin. With my tourniquets I receive the first bedpan. I begin to dry it. I don’t say anything.

‘OK, listen: think about it,’ she says. ‘Shall we say one week. If I don’t hear, I’ll take it as a yes.’ She smiles sweetly.

PIZZA

Nearly Ten Years Earlier

03/06/2006

Dear diary,

…

Cuz apparently that’s a thing I do now, write in my fucking diary. That’s how exciting this year’s been, I’m literally just one step away from talking to myself out loud. I can’t wait to get away. That’s the big news: we are actually really leaving!

Rome baby! Two whole weeks!

Honestly until the end I thought Beadle would chicken out which fuck me would’ve been SUCH a massive let-down, given how hard it’s been to convince her to come in the first place. She’d convinced herself we had to stick around school for ‘summer term projects’, can you fucking believe??? We’re not in drama school. What would we even do? Take an egg home for ten days and change its bandages daily? I showed her the term dates on the prospectus, where it clearly states that school is not on, like properly shut, dead, kaput, until September, but she looked at me with that weird bird face, like she hadn’t heard a word I said. She’s a nice girl really but sometimes I really wonder what her problem is.

So to clear any doubts and because the guy at the agency said we should book soon I asked Mike to tell her, since he’s doing a PhD. Then of course I had to be nice to him for like a week to make up for it and he got super clingy. He’s lucky there are no interesting guys on this course or I would’ve called the rape police on him a long time ago and then BYE BYE funded research post. But anyway he said to Beadle something like, Do you think any of us want to teach extra classes during the summer holidays? Academics are people too! Which is something he says at least once every time we hang out to remind me he’s not so old after all. Actually all it does is remind me that I’m not sure they are. People, I mean. And he IS old. He only says that because he’s behind with his PhD and feels bitter about it. I mean WHO. CARES. Mike is so boring.