I was good at gestures, but it was only in that function room when I spoke my sad-but-true stories in my fragile tone that I finally got the appeal of talking. I thought this is what I will be now: a talker. My career had taken a sinister turn and I had started to keep an eye out, like you do for a new lover, for other things I could try. There weren’t many. All jobs seemed to contain one small thing I just could not do. It was maddening.

I told a number of stories about my father that evening. I was there, but I wasn’t. My mind was mainly preoccupied with what I could do in my new life as a talker: I would be both stylish and intelligent but also deeply affecting in my conversation. When that room of strangers looked up at me I did not know if I wanted them to cry or to clap.

It was in the shower where I found it first. I had moved into my father’s old house, and sometimes would shower sitting down on the stool that was installed for comfort or, if I was feeling up to it, I would stand. The bathroom was filthy with intermittent flashes of what looked like the colour peach. On sitting-down days, I often crawled from one side of the room to the other. I could get away with this because I lived alone. It must have been a standing day as I realised I was a lot closer to the taps than I used to be. I was a lot closer to the hair on the taps. I was stooping over like I was playing the Old Lady in a celebrated stage production, except I was all scrunched up and very naked. I pressed my fingers below my shoulders and felt it shifting, unfurling. The hard roundness of it – like a golf ball or a marble. I dressed myself quickly, being careful not to catch sight of it in the mirror. When I stood on the train that morning, my fingers gripping the rail above, I could feel it growing beneath my skin like a second layer of flesh.

I worked in an office outside the city and we all had the appearance of people who had been brutally exiled. We shed our city selves but, lacking imagination, we had nothing to replace them with. Between the forty of us, I think we could have made a complete person. I had been there six months and it was probably the longest position I ever held. None of it mattered but I liked to pretend it did. If someone came in, I might say ‘Come in!’ That was it. That was the whole script. It wasn’t exactly spiritually fulfilling. Often, I was so bored I couldn’t hold a conversation. I walked around cubicles abandoning sentences. Whenever I entered the kitchen area, my colleagues left quickly and without warning. I think they were jealous because my desk got the most direct sunlight. I didn’t understand them at all. I had a habit of thinking I was very unique and interesting.