‘It’s like a horror film in my underpants,’ I say to my partner as I leave the bathroom and join him for our usual morning routine in the kitchen, making his tea, my coffee, and our breakfasts.

He laughs, a light moment in what have not exactly been fun times. In the past four months, I’ve experienced one miscarriage and one ectopic pregnancy. Over those months, I’ve bled more days than I haven’t. Blood has become something I’m used to, as has the daily inspection of what’s on the pad, a gory ritual reading of tea leaves. The colour palette changes: rust-brown smears, streaks the pale pink of newborn rats, a lipstick-red or rich-mahogany flow. The texture changes too, sometimes watery, sometimes jelly-like, thick as treacle at times, clotted jam at others.