@PatreonofLorralites: You’re so lucky. I wish I was you. I’d do anything to be you.

@gellyjeellybelly: That shit tastes like feet. What’s Gav like in bed, I reckon he likes a blowie, amiriiight?

@YUMMIETUMMY: I find you so inspiring. The best example of how to live your best life … keep posting, keep being you.

4

Ruby

Bonnie was ill for most of the night. Neither of us have slept. She watched TV from six a.m., but five hours later she’s bored and walking around the house moaning like a handmaid, as if forced to stay by a cruel regime she is desperate to overthrow. I have a number of errands to run. I see mothers all the time, taking their children out and about: food shopping, clothes shopping, going into restaurants … they make it look so easy. I don’t do things like that with Bonnie because she screams at me whenever I try. I get most of my chores done while she is at nursery, or while she is with Liam at the weekend. I see those other mothers just getting on with their lives in the company of their children and wonder if maybe they have drugged them? Or if they share some secret to keeping toddlers under control that I don’t know? Maybe today I will discover it, because I have no childcare and I simply must get on with my day. I have urgent things to do, like buying mousetraps, tights and a new bra.

I wouldn’t usually force myself to try on new bras in a bright changing room, especially before a wax, but the underwire came out of my only one this morning, and it’s been so long since I got a new one that I have no idea what size I am. My body shape has barely changed in twenty years, but my boobs have never been the same size the day I got pregnant. I’m almost sure I’ve dropped a cup size.

I tend to do this with things that bring me comfort, like bras. I wear one until it literally falls off my body, hand-washing it most nights in the bathroom sink. This one has been going for five years.

‘Bonnie, you’re going to come with Mummy to the shops.’

‘NO, shops are boring. I want to go to nursery.’ She crosses her arms, stamps her foot and pushes out her lower lip.

‘Bonnie, if you’re good I’ll buy you some sweets.’ She is in her buggy in under thirty seconds and waits patiently as I put on her shoes. Are sweet bribes how the other mothers control their kids? I think of all Bonnie’s vomiting last night and groan. But she does seem a lot better.

We finally get walking and I push her buggy into the Marks and Spencer’s food hall, letting her choose a few different items of confectionary to keep her occupied.