In the bathroom she turned on the taps and waited for the water to heat up and slowly fill the bath. It was such an incredible luxury to be having a bath in the middle of the day she almost laughed. What would Mrs Timms say? Oh how horrified she would be! The housekeeper referred to it as ‘your mother’s bathroom,’ with an implicit disapproval of such louche, unnecessary home comforts. When Verity stripped to her underwear she put her hands on her stomach and felt its egg shape. In the glass she peered at her stomach. Standing sideways it appeared to stick out, distended and ugly, but she breathed in and it flattened. It was hard to tell if there was anything there. She wondered whether if she punched herself she could destroy the thing inside, but that was grotesque. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she took a gulp of the hot liquid and gagged and spluttered, spitting much of it out onto the linoleum floor. It was like drinking turps, and a distant image of herself painting in the school art room blinked in her brain. A lifetime gone since then. The bathroom mirror was steamed up and she could no longer see her reflection and that was a good thing. She wanted to efface herself, to float away from the horror of the present. Tightening her throat, she took another gulp of the vile gin and entered the bath. It was scaldingly hot but that was good too. She felt that the heat inside and around her would clean her out, strip off her layers of filth and muck, cleanse her of the fluids sloshing about inside her, the growth sucking the life out of her. She took the glass, only warm to the touch now, wet with steam from the misty room, drained the remaining gin and sank deep into the bath. Her skin prickled and burned hot pink in the scalding water, her head lolled as if loose from her neck and her mind felt as cloudy as the hot, dripping room.

It was easy to close her eyes and sink under the water, to let the water take her in. It was like sleeping. It wouldn’t be so awful if it ended this way.

*

A knocking in her head. She opened her eyes. Everything was white in the steam of the bathroom, just the taps glinting metal through the mist. She wished her head would stop the banging. Then she realised someone was shouting her name.

‘Ver! What are you doing? How long have you been in there?’

It was Peter. She hadn’t died. And she was ashamed for thinking that she might. Remembering, she felt the slight curve of her belly with a detached horror. At the pit of her stomach was a deep ache. Perhaps the thing, the growth, had gone, drowned in the bath, its new, flickering life choked off.