‘A variety of representatives … from different sectors … will come to the conference,’ she says. I agree to stand in as a representative. She hands me a cup of herbal tea. I want to go home. ‘If you’ve ever thought of adopting a child …’ she begins.

In this dream I am a young dog. I am running and I am blind with pain, blind with blood. My muzzle has been hit and I don’t know where I’m running.

Mona’s niece is pregnant again. Mona has many nieces and nephews, but this niece is known for having all the babies. This must be either her third or her fourth. To spice things up a little, she’s documenting this new pregnancy closely.

‘Fernanda is arty,’ says Mona. ‘Her husband Vasco is a photographer. He takes pictures of the bump.’

They update Mona on the progress once a week. In the photos, Fernanda is always wearing black, posing with her side to a white wall. The shadow of her belly grows like the phases of the moon.

‘Why the black?’ I ask Mona.

‘After, they make a video,’ she says, ‘with the photos from every day.’

I google ‘photos 9 months pregnant’. I am confronted by a list of stop-motion videos. I realize that Fernanda and her husband are not unique practitioners but are operating within a specific artistic niche. I trawl from link to link for a long time, well into the night. It is very nice in the flat at night, very quiet, peaceful. He is never coming back. I sleep two hours; wake up at 6:30 a.m., eat five spoonfuls of sugar.

In this dream I am leaning against a wall. A photographer whose face I cannot see – the heavy blanket of his old-fashioned camera is hiding his head – takes photo after photo of me against the white wall. Every time the shutter clicks, my shadow imprints itself on to the wall, remains there long after the flash has disappeared. The photographer holds up his left hand to signal ‘stay still’, as he takes the same photo, photo after photo. With each flash the shadow behind me grows larger, like gunpowder residue, like a dark halo the same shape as my body.

Alanna snatches Mona’s reading glasses from her desk, positions them on the tip of her nose, turns to me and whispers in a nasal tone: ‘After pregnancy, once they have stitched you back together, the position popularly known as “doggy-style” is the recommended position to perform penetrative sex. Says on Mumsnet.’

A nurses’ in-joke: Mumsnet is full of terrible trash and the amateur medical advice is borderline criminal.

Alanna turns towards Mona, pushes the glasses up the bridge of her nose, shoots her an alarmed look. ‘You might want to notify Fernanda.’ Alanna doesn’t smile, but that’s part of the comedy of it: the professional voice, the butterfly spectacles. What she does is wink and that too is spot-on in character.