Sex and Death by Sarah Hall Page A

stand outside the ‘you’ of the rest of your history and present.
    â€˜Okay, all done,’ the midwife said. Her name was Agatha, according to her nametag, for she hadn’t introduced herself.
    Selene pulled up her pants and moved to the chair beside Agatha, who was typing notes into a computer using her index finger.
    â€˜Now, we need to discuss contraception. It’s mostly a myth about breastfeeding. You want me to prescribe the mini-pill?’
    â€˜No, thanks,’ Selene said. ‘I think I’ll be fine.’
    Agatha looked at her suspiciously. ‘Have you had intercourse since the birth?’
    Selene laughed a little too loudly, a sound verging on a guffaw.
    â€˜You got to get back on the horse,’ Agatha said. ‘The longer you wait, the harder it gets.’
    â€˜I’m not really planning on having sex ever again,’ Selene said, half-joking.
    But Agatha, it seemed, took this declaration very seriously. Her attitude changed immediately into one of bustling concern. She shuffled around in the drawer and held out a form and a pen. ‘I’d like you to fill this out based on how you’ve felt in the past week,’ she said.
    â€˜What is it?’
    â€˜It’s a questionnaire, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. It will help me assess how you’re feeling.’
    Selene looked down at the piece of paper. The first statement was I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things and the choice of responses was: As much as I always could , Not quite so much now , Definitely not so much now and Not at all . ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘but you need to know that in the past seven days I’ve had a failed Botox injection to my sphincter, and every time I’ve had a bowel movement I’ve been in so much pain I’ve cried. It’s got nothing to do with adapting to life with my baby, or hormones. It’s just about being in physical pain. So I’ll answer this honestly, but it doesn’t mean I’m depressed if I’ve had sense of humour failure recently.’
    â€˜I understand,’ Agatha said noncommittally. ‘Why don’t you fill it out and we can go from there.’
    Selene could see that Agatha was now on high alert, her postnatal depression radar quivering. She looked excited, as if she were about to bust Selene for theft, like she was anticipating a victory of sorts. Stupidly, she decided to trust Agatha, and she filled out the ten questions honestly. It felt good to tick Rather less than I used to in response to the statement I have looked forward with enjoyment to things . She was on a liquid diet for the sakeof the fissure, no caffeine despite the sleeplessness, for it compounded the problem of being in semi-constant danger of shitting her pants, and she approached the bathroom each morning as she would a war zone, so yes, she believed it was safe to say that there wasn’t a huge amount she had to look forward to at the moment other than the feel of her infant son’s skin against her own, and his gummy, wondrous first smiles.
    Her mind wandered as she filled out the questionnaire. This was the other thing she had learned in the past few weeks of pain, she realised – when your body stops working the way it should, you start to see anything involving the body as absurd, especially sex. The less of it you’re having, the more bizarre it begins to seem, the more unthinkable it becomes as something anyone would choose to do. She was thinking about sex all the time, but not in a good way. She could not believe she’d ever had it, that anyone in the history of humankind had ever had any. She looked at women who were pregnant with a second child with utter incredulity: they’d actually chosen to have sex again! So it was possible! But when, how, why?
    This wasn’t prudery, it was genuine amazement. She had been placed on the outside of something and was gazing in, more