When the nurse removes your bandages, she asks if you’re planning on doing anything with them, sorting them out, making them more presentable.
She doesn’t say: you look like a burns victim, like you’ve been attacked by a bulldog, like you’ve been struck by lightning, reassembled, like a lunar crater, the surface of the moon.
In truth you would have liked massive tits. A monument to human triumph, like those teetering cairns that hill walkers build. But you are sick of people doing things to your body, you tell her. You don’t want it to be an object to be carved up and prodded.
They give you inserts to put in your bra. They feel like an exotic form of sea life dredged up from the bottom of the ocean, squidgy and gelatinous. Neil complains when he finds them around the house. ‘It’s like your boobs are alive, Mum,’ he says, and after a while you stop using them. You make a pact with yourself to practice self-love, like the women you see on Instagram, grinning under vibrant headscarves, looking on the bright side, doing the work.
Back at the house you fall into a quiet rhythm. You sleep in until 12, while Craig goes to his study and works.
He is researching genealogy. He has discovered his dad’s side are related to Henry VIII and his ambition is to do the whole family tree.
Occasionally you will pop your head round the door of the office to show off a new top you’ve got, one that complements your new more muted colouring or cleverly disguises the crater where your tits used to be.
‘That’s nice,’ he’ll say and you have to believe that he means it. He slept in your bed at the hospital, surviving on Yop and Subway sandwiches. He pretended not to notice when your eyebrows fell out. He always asks if you need anything from the shop. If that’s not love, what is?
