Free Hot Milk by Deborah Levy Page A

going to negotiate a raise for her.’ He tucked his hair behind his ears and laughed when she punched him in the arm. ‘You wouldn’t want to be cursed by Inge. She’s insane when she’s angry. In Berlin she goes three times a week to her kick-boxing class, so don’t mess with her.’
    He walked over to the woman who owned the vintage shop, lit her cigarette and turned his back on us.
    Ingrid reached out and touched my hair. ‘You have a knot. I am embroidering two dresses with a stitch called a French knot. I have to wind the thread around the needle twice. When I’ve finished, I’m going to sew something for you.’
    The feathers trembled against her neck as I pressed the jasmine under her nose.
    A motorbike with two teenage boys perched on the seat roared past us.
    ‘I think you picked those flowers for me, Zoffie.’
    The smell of petrol and jasmine made me feel faint.
    ‘Yes, I picked these flowers for you.’
    I stood behind her and slid the petals into the band of her plait. Her neck was soft and warm.
    When she turned round to face me, the pupils in her eyes were big and black as the sea glittering in the distance.

A Case History
    Rose stands naked under the shower. Her breasts droop, her belly folds and folds again, her skin is pale and smooth, her silver-blond hair is wet, her eyes are bright, she loves the warm water falling on her body. Her body. What is her body supposed to want and who is it supposed to please and is it ugly or is it something else? She is waiting for withdrawal symptoms from the lack of the three pills that have been deleted from her list of medication. So far they have not arrived. Yet she continues to wait for them like a lover, nervous and excited. Will she be disappointed if they don’t turn up?
    Today, Julieta Gómez is going to take a case history of Rose’s body and I have been asked to be present. Where does a case history start?
    ‘It starts with family,’ Julieta Gómez says. ‘It is a history.’ She has swapped her dove-grey heels for trainers. Her thin chiffon blouse is tucked into tailored trousers which press tight against her hips. She walks Rose to a chair in the physiotherapy room and sits opposite her. ‘Are you ready to make a start?’
    Rose nods while Julieta fiddles with a small sleek black box lying between them on the desk. She had reassured my mother that this device was used for all the clinic audio archiving and that it was confidential. So now the volume levels were set. Apparently they would both soon forget that their conversation was being recorded.
    Julieta spoke first to give some facts. She noted the date, the time, my mother’s name, age, weight and height.
    I sit uneasily in the corner of the physiotherapy room with my laptop on my knees, floating out of time in the most peculiar way. It seems wrong, even unethical, to have asked me to be there but I had agreed to Gómez’s request on the understanding that apart from Tuesdays I would be free for the rest of the treatment. I have to pay for my freedom by listening to my mother’s words.
    She is speaking.
    Her father had a temper problem. Which can be confused with having high levels of energy. Which can be confused with being manic. He needed no more than two hours of sleep a night. Her mother suffered from her father. Which can be confused with depression. She needed no less than twenty-three hours of sleep. I know this history but I don’t want to be connected to it. I put on my headphones and gaze at YouTube on my shattered screen with all my life in it. Some of that life is the thesis for my abandoned doctorate that is lurking under the digital constellations made in a factory on the outskirts of Shanghai.
    Now and again I lift off the headphones.
    My mother is giving a history of her present illness. Where does that history start? It moves around in time and merges into past history, childhood illness and all the rest of it. This is not chronological time. Julieta will have to later