Summerwater by Sarah Moss (top 10 motivational books .txt) 📕

they do have plenty of nappies if she needs to improvise a pad, and there must be scissors in the house. Look for scissors, she thinks, but she doesn’t need them now and that’s not what this hour is for, crafting your own sanitary towels. What else did Jon say, paint your toenails? She does, occasionally, in summer, she and Izzie together choosing which of their twenty toes should have which colour but she is unlikely to be wearing sandals any day soon, not least because she didn’t bring them here, and anyway it’s another thing that Izzie would enjoy too, and anyway she didn’t bring any nail polish either – well, why would you, really – so she’s just wasted about another two minutes of her hour.

Still, she thinks, still, if they are going to have sex later, there’s certainly a little titivating could be done. She puts her hand up her jumper – cold hand – to check her armpit, which she can’t have shaved for a few days, and then she remembers that hair on her areola, the big black one that comes back. She did deal with it religiously while breastfeeding, who would want that in his mouth with his milk, but lately – she goes into the bathroom where there’s a mirror and lifts the jumper and takes out her left boob, which goes all perky in the cold. Not so bad, she thinks, considering, considering it wasn’t that exciting to start with. She strokes her nipple and the breast’s round underside, feels the other one wake up too. Yes, she thinks, yes, they are hers again. She must tell Jon. But the hair is there, and alarmingly long. She tries to use her fingernails as tweezers although it almost never works, just bends the nails which are softer than they probably should be anyway, she needs more protein or calcium or B vitamins or whatever it is, doesn’t like supplements because they’re just an excuse for a poor diet which would be a reasonable position if she then took to eating kale or almonds or oily fish – horrible oily fish with bones and slime and a mess that has to go straight to the outside bin and a smell that lives under the stairs for days – but is mildly self-destructive when paired with a diet persistently based on tea and toast and the children’s leftovers. Buy a multivitamin supplement, she thinks, along with the tampons, either that or eat some kale, as if she doesn’t know perfectly well that the choice licenses inaction: it’s not that she’s deciding not to address the problem, just that at any given moment she is inclining towards one solution and therefore not obliged to act on the other. And meanwhile she really does need the tweezers, which she knows are in the First Aid kit because you need them for removing ticks and it is a foolish person who goes to the Scottish hills without a means of removing ticks. But the First Aid kit, she’s pretty sure, is in the car, and she doesn’t want Jon and Izzie to see her rummaging in the car, they’ll come and help and she’ll have to explain that she does not in fact require First Aid but only – no, she thinks, no, even she will have a moment to herself in the bathroom later, before any sex is at all possible, and she’ll deal with the hair then. Unless she can get it out with her fingernails. Or her teeth, can she reach the top of her areola with her teeth? She did once try to suck her own milk, when her breasts were engorged after Izzie was born and she was weeping with the pain and the only effect of the cabbage leaves in the bra recommended by the midwife was the discovery of three small caterpillars in a place where a person does not expect to find caterpillars: well, said Jon, of course I bought organic cabbage, you don’t want pesticides on your nipples for breastfeeding, do you? Very nearly, she can. She can stick her tongue out and touch the hair, which is as wiry and prickly as she thought.

Ow, her neck.

Right, Jon did not give her this hour for licking her own nipple hairs. She rubs her neck. She’s a bit hungry, she thinks, she could have some chocolate, while Izzie’s not here to want some and spoil her dinner and learn to associate sugar with treats. Or maybe she’s just thirsty, she read somewhere that people often eat when really all they need is a drink of water, though she can drink as much water as she likes when the children are around, she’s not wasting this hour drinking water. Oh, tea, she thinks, a lovely cup of tea drunk while still hot enough to scald a baby, that’s what she should do. And a biscuit with it, one of those posh chocolate ones bought as a holiday treat along with the good olives and the croissants, although she shouldn’t eat those on her own, they’re for sharing, even Pat could probably have half of one to smear across his face. Tea, anyway, and she fills the kettle and turns it on and while she’s waiting has another go at those taps and then wanders back to the window. They’re still there, on the beach, Pat standing now grasping both of Jon’s hands so that Jon has to stoop down in a way that hurts her back when she does it and must be agonising for him, a good six inches taller, and Izzie paddling in water closer to the top of her wellies than Claire would encourage, it would only take one bigger-than-most wave, not that it matters really, much, wet feet, Jon’s right, the kids can have an afternoon bath if they get too cold, maybe hot chocolate, not, probably, that there is any hot chocolate, not unless someone else