Earlier… We’re watching television, sprawled across the couch with your feet in my lap. I’m rubbing your feet and you keep apologising and blushing because the youth from Burnsall is making himself known. The burps have stopped—he’s too far gone for that. “Don’t apologise. I find it cute.” You stare at me sceptically over a belly whose mound is lower, more diffuse. “You did not just say that.” “It’s all— it’s all part of the process.