‘You have wonderful tattoos on your back?’ Zahra says.
Beth nods slowly.
‘Christ, I’m a fricking easel. Of what?’ I ask.
‘I think it’s a tree?’ Little Jude rolls off Beth’s boob and she pops him on her shoulder and clips her bra into place. ‘Here, let me get a picture for you.’
She comes over with her magic phone, takes a pic and shows me. That’s not a tree, that’s a bloody forest on my back and a sexy woman in a beret with a devil tail. Who’s she? Before I hand the phone back, the camera comes on again and I take a look at my face on the screen. I’ve not done this yet. When I woke up, they were so keen to do their scans that they wheeled me straight into MRI and I caught a glimpse of someone in a lift. Someone with a bandaged head and bruised eyes like she’d been in a fight. She had no hair. Oh my god, that’s me. I recognise her. Has she aged? She looks like she’s seen stuff, her eyebrows need work, but her eyes are still the same bluey-grey colour.
‘So I’ve also spent the last ten years doing stuff to my body. Anything else I should know about? Is this aGirl with the Dragon Tattoothing? Am I a spy? Am I really bloody good with guns now?’
‘I wouldn’t know if you were a spy. I don’t think you’re a spy. You’re terrible at keeping secrets in any case.’
My shoulders slump. I’m not scrapping that theory though because that’s what happened with Jason Bourne when he fell off that boat.
‘When did you get your piercings done?’ Zahra asks.
‘My what now?’ I say, reaching up to my ears.
Beth winces a little, not quite knowing what to say. ‘Oh, well… you nearly broke the MRI here because when you came in you were unconscious and naturally they didn’t think to look for your piercings,’ she explains.
‘Where the hell are my piercings?’ I ask.
Zahra reaches in a cabinet under the bed and pulls out a cardboard basin full of metal bits that look like they’re the fittings for a flatpack wardrobe.
‘A nipple, I think, and then you had a clitoral hood thing too… I had the pleasure of removing them. Someone suggested a metal detector to make sure we hadn’t missed anything.’
I reach at my private areas, Zahra laughing.
‘But why? How? Have I got holes in my minge?’ There’s a grin I can’t quite explain on Beth’s face. ‘Why are you laughing?’ I ask her.
‘You got it done one summer because you heard it increases sexual pleasure,’ Beth explains.
‘It does?’ asks Zahra.
‘I wouldn’t remember…’ I reply. I remove my gown to take a look at my naked form. Now this has changed. I have a softer stomach, my legs look fuller, my pubes are bristly. ‘So I told you all about my fanny piercing?’
‘You have a habit of broadcasting information. Some family dinner and no one believed it so you got your bits out in one of the bedrooms and showed us. Grace asked if it jingled when you ran,’ Beth informs us, bursting into laughter, tears in her eyes. ‘You literally just pulled your knickers down in that room, no shame. Emma fell over from the shock. She told you to douse your bits in salt water so it wouldn’t get infected. You said it stung and Meg and her just looked at you because they’d had babies so we got a rundown of their vaginal traumas.’
Like, why isn’t that burnt into my memory? Surely something like that would stick to the grey matter? ‘Do I pee funny now?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Luce. We share a lot but there are limits.’
I laugh. Oh, Bethy.
‘Luce, it’s who you are. There’s a real freedom about you – courage, adventure, nothing was off limits. You were always the one at the top of the tree and one of us would have to come get you, you gave bullies what for, you defied everything. It was part of your magic and, in your twenties, it was a running theme. You lived your best life.’
‘Lived my best life? Did you just come up with that?’ I ask her.
‘No, it’s a thing now. People say it a lot. I need to catch you up with the lingo,’ she says, patting her baby’s back as he falls soundly asleep on her shoulder. Look at him, Beth. That’s your baby. ‘And when you’re telling your nurse to get her boobs out, when you swear and ask me if you’ve got holes in your minge, then that’s my Lucy. It’s unapologetic, slightly… no,very… coarse but you were open and honest. So honest and funny. You were the tonic we all needed.’
‘Well, obviously. You bitches were kinda boring, even back then…’ She smiles and comes over to sandwich me in a hug again. ‘Beth, we’re squishing your baby again…’
‘He won’t mind… Is this a good time to tell you you’ve got a peach tattooed on your right arse cheek too?’
5
Things they don’t tell you when you wake up from a coma: you don’t just spring up out of bed like a grandparent who’s found a Golden Ticket. After all the relief settles that you are alive and semi-kicking, you’re still a physical shell of your once former self. You’ve been lying down for weeks, crapping in a nappy and have multiple tubes coming out your orifices so it takes some time for your body to return to normal. I also ache everywhere because my return to normality is being controlled by Igor the physio man. When I’m done in this place, I am going to make a voodoo doll out of him and ensure that every night I stick pins in his crotch. Blunt pins. Lots of blunt pins.
