I said nothing; there was nothing I could say. The moment I had cut him was lost to me, blacked out. It seemed irrelevant now, anyway; nothing was relevant but the blood, the fact that it wouldn’t stop. You knew this would happen, a voice in my head was saying, over and over again. You did it deliberately.

Shut up. I shouted out loud, turning as though to spit something out.

What? Jake was panicking, moving too much.

I’ll have to call an ambulance, I said, my voice steadier now, the old pink pyjamas I was holding against him turning maroon, blossoming out and out, endless, colours behind closed eyelids. Jake was pale, his skin glossy and bare, like new paint.

A wave of nausea. I looked down, retched into my cupped hand. An accident. It was an accident.

The woman on the phone seemed angry with me. She knows, I couldn’t help thinking. Somehow, she knows everything. She kept asking me questions: was he breathing? Was he bleeding from the eyes? All the questions were about Jake, about his body; none of them were about what had happened. An accident, I’d said, at the beginning of the call. An accident with a razor. Nothing else seemed to be needed.

It’ll be there in five minutes, she said, eventually, in her strange, plain voice. Make sure the door is open. Make sure the paramedics can enter the premises.

I nodded, pointlessly, put the phone down on the bed.

I looked at my hands, lifted them to my face, felt the rough lack of comfort in my own touch. I had done it all, but what had I done? I could feel the flight of my own mind fluttering within my skull, hitting bone as it tried to escape.

I tried to think of something normal to say. Unbelievable! Surely we’d laugh about this, later on, in a few weeks, a few years. Wouldn’t we? But Jake’s eyes were closed again; not peacefully this time: they were screwed tight, creased shut in agony.

~

Here: the third time. There is no going back now.

Never before has she had blood like this. Under her nails. Under her tongue, somehow. From her fingers to her mouth.

However much she spits and drinks, it will not go away. She had forgotten what it tastes like: a hot pavement, a forearm, fresh from the swimming pool. Like a birth room: like the future.

~

35

35

If we pulled the curtains all the way around, there was privacy. There was a rectangle of it, the bed, the drip with its hanging bag, the chair for me to sit in. Jake’s parents were still with the children, as they’d been since last night, summoned by a phone call, by a brief, false explanation. Jake was due to be released the next day; there was anaesthetic, fears of infection, a staggering number of stitches.