FRIENDLY KID...
 Mark
It’s summer 1970something and Mum has to spend most of her time lying down, little Biafran thin Rudy poking her to try and get attention. Mum wanting to be asleep but unable to get her eyes shut without him mithering and pestering her. She’s not having the best of times. Her belly lump's so big she has trouble getting vertical. She's like a number six with legs. She's an architect's nightmare. She needs scaffolding. She needs all this to be over so she can get back to some sort of normal. This is the biggest she's ever been, she's stretched like a balloon some party idiot just won't stop blowing into. She's gonna explode if she gets any bigger. Inside there's room enough for two. There's room for a bunkbed, bedside cabinet and portable tv.
There's no way she's gonna get her figure back after this. This is what she was thinking. These are the sort of thoughts that were getting transmitted. She was a twenty-seven year old hourglass; she's gonna end up a twenty-eight year old potato sack. Then there's the bladder problem, the nipple pain, the chocolate and cheese addiction.
What’s for din-dins, Mummykins? my foetus brother and me would ask. We don't want beer and cigarettes. We don't want vegetables, we don't want meat pie and potato hash.
Well what do you want my little treasures? She'd ask us as we kicked her in the stomach, punched her in the liver, sucked our thumbs and tried to stand on our heads. You know you only need to ask.
We were in charge. We were in the driving seat. If we didn't get what we wanted we could smack her one in the kidneys and sit on her bladder.
Chocolate!
Cheese!
Chocolate!
Cheese!
Chocolate!
Cheese!
“I don't know why,” our Mummy'd say, outside in the oxygen world, “but I could kill for a choc ice!”
Kill kill!
Kill kill!
Cheese!
Cheese!
“And a nice piece of Stilton. I never used to like cheese at all, never mind that funny smelly blue stuff.”
We wanted baby Edams coated in thick chocolate sauce, we wanted chocolate cheesecake, we wanted cauliflower cheese - only without the cauliflower - we wanted chocolate biscuits - only without the biscuit. We wanted so much chocolate and cheese we made Mummy sick. Sick to death.
She swore she’d never been like this with the other three. For the first six months Mother had never felt healthier. She ate well, she slept like a baby, she glowed with the radiancy of a saint. Life was wonderful. Mum felt so good about herself, she felt so confident, so beautiful, she couldn't help but want to share, to give out all the love she felt inside.
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