Elaine has begun to fantasise about a double mastectomy. In the fantasy, a surgeon places a frame across the top of Elaine’s body, which he drapes with a pastel blue sheet. Then, with two dismissive flicks of his wrist, he removes Elaine’s breasts. Elaine sees only the result. A flat uncluttered chest stripped of everything except the essentials.
‘You should learn to love your body,’ says Elaine’s friend Liz, when they meet at the M&S café one afternoon. ‘Did I tell you about Rose?’
‘Yes Liz,’ says Elaine. ‘Many times.’
Rose is Liz’s grandmother-in-law. Back in the spring, Liz had accompanied her new husband William to Nigeria to meet his family. Whilst Liz was enjoying a barbecue with William’s family, Rose pulled a chair alongside them, wresting a withered eighty-year-old tit from her
