Fledging E-Book

Rose Diell

• Herausgeber: Renard Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 248

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

When Lia lays an egg she doesn't know what to do. At her age, it's impossible to escape the baby question, and all her friends seem to be having children. She feels her heart's not in it – but all the same, there's the egg, impossible to ignore, lying in a nest of towels in the living room. Her partner on tour on the other side of the world and her mother diagnosed with a terminal illness, Lia finds herself torn, unsure whether she's ready to give up on her songwriting dreams; but time is running out, and she must make one of the biggest decisions of her life. Beautifully written and brilliantly original, Fledging is a riveting tale that asks what it is to lead a meaningful life, and sounds a resounding call for women to make their own choices, whether that means embracing motherhood or living child-free.

Leseprobe

Fledging

rose diell

renard press

Renard Press Ltd

124 City Road

London EC1V 2NX

United Kingdom

[email protected]

020 8050 2928

www.renardpress.com

Fledging first published by Renard Press Ltd in 2024

Text © Rose Diell, 2024

Cover design by Will Dady

Rose Diell asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, or is used fictitiously.

Renard Press is proud to be a climate positive publisher, removing more carbon from the air than we emit and planting a small forest. For more information see renardpress.com/eco.

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, used to train artificial intelligence systems or models, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the publisher.

EU Authorised Representative: Easy Access System Europe – Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia, [email protected].

contents

Fledging

Brooding

Hatching

Fledging

Acknowledgements

About the Author

fledging

brooding

It starts as bloating, a hard curvature in my gut that won’t go away. I wonder if it’s my period, but it isn’t the right time. The cramps come slowly at first, like a rising tide, and then grow shorter and sharper, a racing heartbeat.

I press my hands into the kitchen counter and bend over myself, navel-gazing. I wonder if I have any pills left. Mum always tells me to use them only as a last resort. I fill a mug with water, but the medicine shelf’s empty.

The cup drops from my hands and rolls on the floor. I groan, rivers running across the linoleum as I clutch at my sides. Over the past few months, I’ve come to know pain more intimately, but this is something new.

I stagger to the small room at the top of the stairs, unsure whether to sit on the bowl or kneel beside it. It’s one of those rooms where nothing fits, the sink overhanging the loo, butting up against a bathtub lined with long-empty bottles of shampoo.

Something’s coming, but from where I don’t know. My abdomen constricts, invisible hands wringing it like a damp cloth. I fumble with the zip of my jeans, thinking ‘fuckfuckfuckfuck’ in time with the beats of my speeding heart.

I lean forward, elbows on knees, fingers laced together, eyes closed to shut out the pain. I rock back and forth. And I begin to push.

Something large and smooth is coming out, but not from where I’d expected. It’s coming from the empty space between my legs that’s always there, the pocket that’s as much a part of me as my fingers and toes. No-no-no-no. This can’t be happening. Not now.

Frantically, I begin to count. When did I last bleed?

I’ve been asking myself what I want, going round in circles, questioning again and again. Now I’m terrified my body has got ahead of my brain.

Prematurely.

Somewhere in my head a voice says, Maybe this is what you want. The voice sounds like our old neighbour, who’d always give unsolicited advice about how to do our front garden, or which colour to paint our door. But it’s quickly drowned out by the rest of my brain screaming, Not now. Not yet. I need more time.

Whatever it is, it’s rounded and white. I wish I could force it back inside, like choking back vomit. But it seems whatever it is has been festering for too long. My body wants it out. I begin to push, clenching my teeth and digging my fingers into the backs of my hands. A sheen develops on my face. My mind is still screaming – it can’t be, it can’t be – as I will whatever it is back inside. But my body is determined to expel. Expunge.

Bent over, I begin to pray – not to a god but to some dark space inside of me, dredging strength as my jaw muscles start to ache and my abdomen constricts still tighter, squeezing the breath out of me, bringing the first taste of nausea.

Finally, with a deep breath and a last push, something splashes into the water and I feel my whole body give. I sit there, catching my breath, eyes closed, suddenly wondering whether I could stay here for ever, head resting on my knuckles, and never have to face up to whatever’s now floating in the bowl. I can’t hear anything. I’m not sure whether to be reassured by that or concerned. I remember pink bubble-letter headlines in glossy magazines, girls who didn’t even realise they were pregnant. Idiots.

Over the past few months, I’ve been feeling a weight, my heart dropping into my abdomen and twisting, writhing pain, but it only made me think I should see a doctor, check the kaleidoscope of cancers. Now I ask myself: was it my body preparing for this moment all along?

I feel heat spread across my face, judging myself in the absence of anyone else here to do it.

In the midst of my shame, I begin to wonder. Not looking becomes worse than looking. There’s a rusty, salty smell in the air, and I need to put a picture to it before my mind fills in the worst.

As if emerging from wreckage, I allow myself to sit up and open my eyes. I widen my thighs to look down into the water below. A white moon winks back at me from a sea of red.

I yelp, jumping up from the seat, scrabbling for more and more toilet paper to wipe myself and pull my underwear back on. This is impossible – this must be a nightmare. But looking in the mirror at the woman who looks like me, I know it’s not. I kneel by the side of the toilet bowl. Clutching the seat as if hanging on for dear life, I allow myself to peer down into its depths. A pale sort of ball, floating in a mess of congealed red gunk and yellow pus. It stares up at me like a bloodshot eye. Accusatory.

I start to wish it was only a baby. Not that there’s an ‘only’ when it comes to babies. I know that – that’s why I’ve been self-dissecting for so long; why I’ve been the woman they don’t show in the adverts, the one crying with relief to see a single line on the test – no virus today. But at least with a baby there are processes to follow. People to call. Options to consider. My options now are—

I turn, and retch into the bin. Acid and bile fill the air. I retch again.

I try to slow my breathing, thinking of the phrase ‘compose yourself’. But that always seems to describe the act of slotting back into society, behaving as you should. No one on earth could tell me how I ‘should’ behave now. As for society…

I stare at the grouting for a minute, but see only the bloodshot eye, unrelenting. I realise I can’t stay here on the floor all day. I also realise, with another wave of nausea, that I want to touch it. Perhaps to see if it’s real. Or perhaps just to see what it feels like. Carefully, as if wounded, I raise myself to a higher kneel and peer into the gory depths below. Instantly that familiar iron smell rolls through me, laced with something rancid. I grit my teeth and roll up a sleeve to reach my hands into the water. It’s disconcertingly warm. I shudder: that’s my warmth. I can’t help but grimace as my fingers come into contact with the red gelatinous liquid, but it’s only my own blood, after all (I tell myself). It’s natural (I tell myself).

Fingers splayed across the smooth surface of the object, fingertips bloody, I lift it out of the water just high enough to let the worst of the drips sound ominously into the murkiness below. It’s nearly small enough to lift with one hand, but that feels precarious, so I take it in both. I raise it up into the air above me, as if lifting the heavenly host.

It’s not an eye at all. It’s a perfect oval.

Where the blood has dripped away, its surface is chalky smooth.

It’s an egg.

Five months ago. My best friend, the girl I’d eaten crayons with – raised woodlice – spied on family members – made-believe dragons – fake-baked cookies with – told me she was pregnant.

Was it then that the egg first took form?

We were sitting on a bench on London Fields, one towards each end so we could face each other. The fading green of late summer spread out from us towards a line of trees, a border between the park and the blocks of flats beyond. Safa looked on-trend in a striped baggy sweatshirt and biker boots. I was regretting my over-confident summer dress.

‘Needed to get on with it,’ she was saying. ‘Time’s running out. If I’m going to have another by the time I’m thirty-seven.’ Safa waved her hands around, casually (she thought), frantically (it appeared to me), her striking hazel eyes gleaming. She’d always wanted children – I knew she did. Even when we played our games in our forts there was always a baby involved – but it still came as a surprise. Why now? How now?

‘This is huge,’ I said, suppressing a shiver.

‘Massive,’ she said, grinning. There was something manic about the glint in her eyes. ‘If it happens. It’s still early. But I wanted you to know.’

I’d wondered why she ordered a decaf at the kiosk. Now it all made sense.

I suddenly wondered what her last drink had been.

Did you gorge on sushi and brie before you stopped taking the pill? I wanted to ask.

‘I’m happy for you,’ I said, and leant in for a hug. I was. Happy it was her, not me. I tried not to hug too hard, suddenly seized of the urge to keep hold of her and never let go. Tried to ignore the little fingers clawing at my throat. Deep breaths. Think of your yoga videos.

Pregnant women have to do yoga differently, I thought, looking at her. Their tendons can snap like elastic bands because their pregnant muscles don’t know how far they’ve stretched. Or their pregnant brains. Something like that, anyway. I don’t know which.

Suddenly I couldn’t think of anything to say. A world of possibilities – trips to plan, restaurants to book, kooky pop-up events to get in line for, drinking games to play – all seemed now reduced into one: her baby. Not one. Not reduced. A baby opens. A baby is an opportunity. Look at the joy in her eyes! Think of the experiences she’ll have! You haven’t lived until you’ve been a mother.

You haven’t lived.

You haven’t known love.

‘I’m happy for you,’ I said. Deep breaths. First my friend Dimitri, now Safa. Another one bites the dust. My day of reckoning inches nearer.

‘You said that already,’ she said, giggling. Nervously?

We got up; no need to say anything, but somehow it felt like the right moment to keep walking. We overtook the parents with their toddlers, but lagged behind the cyclists and the roller skaters with their 80s elbow pads. The concrete path snaked through proud tree trunks and past the lido, its squat orange-tiled roof out of place amongst the greenery. We circled almost the whole park talking about Bake Off and Strictly before I couldn’t resist quizzing her again.

I stopped short, turned to her. Children ran past us with their swimming gear, screaming.

‘What made you do it?’ I asked desperately, thirsty for her answer, fixated on her shining eyes in the hope they really were windows to the soul. ‘Take the plunge?’ I pictured tentative toes on the concrete edge of the lido, a sudden leap into the unknown, full, blinding immersion, and then surfacing for air. ‘Why now?’

‘You asked that already too,’ she said, moving from giggling to frowning. A small bite of the lip, a little chew, as if on now-banned serrano ham. ‘It’s time.’

In the bathroom, blood crusting beneath my fingernails and egg held high, I think of David.

I wish I could call him. It must be the middle of the night there. But then I try to imagine the conversation. His mind perceives only straight lines. He’d assume it was a joke. A fantasy. Some kind of metaphor.

I don’t blame him. There’s no way I’d believe this, not without seeing it with my own eyes. Silly phrase. It’s not as if you can ever see through anyone else’s, not really, much as we might try. We don’t even know if we see the same colours. My red could be your green could be someone else’s fuchsia. Maybe that’s what happens when I look at a baby. Maybe I’m not seeing something other people see. I’m baby-blind. I only see one colour, and it’s a fine one, not bad at all, maybe like a sort of dusky rose, or even a teal, but not the rainbows, the sparkles, the off-the-scale prism exploding in a supernova that others see.

I picture David in front of me, his straight jaw, broad shoulders, floppy hair. That look in his eyes which tells me he’s got me all worked out. Except now he’s puzzled. This is something even he can’t work out.

David, something tragic has happened.

David, I’ve got something to tell you.

David, I think there’s something wrong with me.

David, please don’t think I’m crazy.

David, I think I’m imagining things.

I’m crazy. I must be?

Or perhaps hysterical is the more appropriate word. What was it Plato called a uterus lacking both a male and a child? ‘Sad and unfortunate?’

I try to calm my thoughts. I find myself thinking of the phrase ‘pregnant pause’. It’s me and the unavoidable reality of this room: this silent egg, blankly staring me in the face and holding my eyes open so I can’t look away. Somewhere beneath the screaming in my brain, my body is also roaring back to life, reminding me that it’s there. I feel sore all over, bruised and tender where the egg forced itself on to the world. My arms shake, and for a moment I fear – wish – that the egg will fall to the ground and crack. But I know I can’t let that happen; the mere thought sends a rush through my veins. First, I think it’s a primal desire to protect this thing, whatever it is. Then I think maybe it’s something else: a deep hunger to know what’s inside.

Instead, I sink to the floor, clutching the egg to my chest. The sink looms above my head; the bathtub is a blank wall in front of me. And then the cramping returns, softer this time, the echo of a question only half-answered.

Time seems to be running out everywhere I go, sand becoming water and then evaporating before my eyes. A few weeks ago, on the phone with Mum, in the lull between Christmas and New Year. I was in the kitchen, leaning on the counter, half the vegetables chopped for dinner but no cooking started. As soon as I heard her voice, with its remnants of Italian intonation, I could picture her: crinkly eyes, hair tied loosely, a tentative smile.

‘The latest prognosis is not good,’ she said. ‘I can’t avoid it any longer: I’m composting, Lia. Not long now before I’m six feet under at the end of your garden.’

I looked at the vegetable cuttings spread over the counter, browning at the edges. We all wilt eventually. But Mum was only sixty-nine.

I told myself she was joking. She’d been saying things like this for a while, for half my life, it seemed – it was in her nature, Sicilian fatalism, she said. I told myself she was exaggerating, had misunderstood. And I decided not to correct her mixed metaphor, though it irked me. Compost sits above the ground – in bins, usually.

‘Surely there must be something they can do!’ I said, contemplating the mysterious ‘they’, the powers that be, the holders of the elixir of life. Wishing I could track down this ‘they’, shake them until it hurt. Until they worked out a way to save Mum.

‘Maybe. We’ll have to see. Can you come over tomorrow?’

I pictured Mum’s face – clear blue eyes disappearing into folds of skin, her tissue-paper hands aged by the years, by this disease. The smell of bougainvillea filled my nostrils, and freshly baked sponge, and a cup of tea after a rainy walk. But there was something else, too. Things going stale. Beginning to decay. I tried not to think of her metaphor.

‘There’s nothing I’d like more,’ I said. She sounded surprised, even on the phone. I’m not normally so effusive.

‘Are you OK otherwise? How’s work going? Your song-writing?’ she asked, her voice mum-like, powdered with sugar, trying to deflect attention from herself.

‘Perfectly all right,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even. The last thing I wanted to do was bring her down. ‘It’ll be good to see you.’

We hung up and I stared at the unchopped carrots, unable to remember what I was supposed to do with them. My phone screen switched to clock view: the seconds ticked by, and still the carrots lay there, the peel ready for composting.

I looked up, trying to place myself in time and space, and saw the other clock in the room: the old-fashioned one on the wall, with a proud face and angry hands, a nod to the days when such things were needed. Insurance against running out of charge, smashed screens, zombie apocalypses.

We must always know the time, no matter what happens, for if we don’t know how much time there is, how will we know how much we have left?

I picked up the knife and began to chop. The next day, I’d go to see Mum.

Tick.

The egg is a bit bigger than a baby’s head. I think. No wonder it felt like it was turning me inside out. Imagine giving birth to a whole baby. I think of baby charts, fruit comparisons, blueberries to pomegranates. What size is this? Pineapple? Thank God no prickles. I feel panic rising in my throat. What the fuck is inside?

That’s the thing. There’s no way of knowing. It could be a lizard, a chick, a salamander – maybe even a dragon, now I come to think of it. Or something I’ve never heard of. I mean, has a woman ever laid an egg before?

The cramps subside again, and I start to wonder why I’m holding the grim thing. I notice a smudge of blood on the white bathtub edge, wonder how it got there. I curse myself for my clutter: the bubble-bath not needed, the old razor heads I should have thrown away. I clutch the egg against my chest with one hand and use the other to pull myself up to the sink, then stand over it and pause, trying not to look at myself in the mirror. Once again I imagine the egg slipping through my fingers, a fumble that could have been an accident, and falling to the floor so that it cracks into a million pieces and what’s left behind is… what?

Something stops me. Perhaps it’s the lead in my heart, in my gut. Perhaps it’s that I’m already hypnotised by its elliptical nature, bewitched by its smooth white face. Perhaps it’s that my brain doesn’t want to imagine what I might find inside. Perhaps it’s the sense that I’ve embarked on an adventure and need to see it through.

Carefully, I manoeuvre the egg in the sink so that it’s beneath the taps, still avoiding my own reflection, though I know it’s there, inches from my forehead. The egg feels heavy, though maybe that’s only my shaking arms. Heavy enough for something to be in there, incubating, waiting to come alive. I turn the knobs so that cool water rushes over my hands, then worry that whatever is inside will get too cold, so add some hot, until it’s perfectly lukewarm. I cup its round shape in my palms, spreading the water so that all the blood and debris washes away. Now it shines whiter than the sink. I put my jeans back on, take a warm towel from the rack, use it to lift and wrap the egg, and before I know it I’m cradling it, sat on the closed toilet lid, looking down at this mysterious object in my arms that is apparently now my responsibility.

My phone rings from my music room – a little box room the estate agent called the ‘nursery’. I jump, and swear as I try to stop myself dropping my bundle. I place it gently on the floor, still wrapped in the towel, and follow the strains of the only song I’ve ever sold – ‘Beyond You’ – across the landing. I pull open the door and step over boxes of sheet music, scattered pens and a hoodie in need of a wash to reach my phone, sitting on the control panel of the keyboard. It’s Mum.

‘How are you, cara?’

This contact with the outside world wakes me with a sickening jolt. It’s as if I’ve been in a trance, high on endorphins, and my mother’s voice has crashed over me like a bucket of ice. Everything that’s just happened flashes before me like a crime-scene montage: taking a break from songwriting because I was starting to feel funny, heading to the kitchen for a snack, then neglecting the snack to press my fist into my stomach, the cramps, the buckling over the toilet, the contractions, the gory mess I’ve flushed away, this impossible, impossible egg, produced somehow by this body of mine – Et tu, Brute? And now my mum’s voice on the phone, like bass booming from the subwoofer.

This is not a drill.

‘I’m…’ I begin, before realising there is nothing I can say. A reptile? My sense of humour’s intact, at least.

My Simon & Garfunkel poster and the cupboard full of David’s old DVDs feel as if they’re closing in, the world shrinking around me. I’m suffocating. I need to get out. I throw my phone down on the little keyboard stool, turn and run, wincing, trying to ignore my sore joints and the raw feeling in my knickers. Down the stairs, out the front door. It slams behind me, heavy in the night air.

My breath mists in the January cold. People have put out their rubbish and their recycling, council logos emblazoned on green and purple plastic. The notion that the sacred rhythm of Bin Night still continues seems so absurd, I almost break into laughter. But then I register the words ‘free range’ on an empty egg carton and the thought that I could abandon the egg in one of these crates like a foundling becomes too-too-tempting. I need to get away from this preposterous ordinariness, from my preposterous thoughts. I start to run, feet sounding out like slaps in the silence.

Blocks of flats tower over me from the other side of the road, while on my side the terrace of seventies box houses stretches down the hill, each of the glowing windows signalling at least one oblivious person going about their entirely ordinary evening, eggs only relevant to their chocolate mousse or Victoria sponge. I know the faces behind many of the curtains; unusually for this city, David and I have got to know them since moving in. ‘At least we’ve got people to call in an emergency,’ we’ve said to each other on several occasions. But if I am sure of one thing, it is that I will not be calling anyone.

I run past house after house, familiar curtains blurring until I reach the houses that are only houses and carry no reference or meaning.

I’ve been feeling lightheaded, dizzy, but the cold air starts to revive me. My breath puffs silver, but I don’t care. My feet pound against the pavement and I start to sweat, despite not taking a jacket. I run past leering men and shivering schoolchildren still in their uniforms, gleefully starting their weekends. I dash across a road, narrowly missed by a screeching Golf. Run away from the station, up the hill this time. Up, up and up until my heart’s going to explode. I keep running until I reach the top, where there’s a gap in the buildings and you can see the whole of London stretched out before you. In the past this view has inspired me, set new tunes playing in my head. But tonight I only see indistinguishable lights rising from white noise. All the sounds of the street have combined into one raucous mass, and the city is unending.

I feel sobs building in my chest, like an electric kettle ready to boil. I look around at the bus stop, the Victorian townhouses, the turreted roof of the Horniman museum silhouetted against the city, wonder how I got here. Try to organise my thoughts. Running away won’t fix anything. The egg will still be there when I get home. OK, I could keep running for ever, invent an alias, get a new life, join a witness-protection programme. I think of Victoria coach station, the place Safa and I always said we’d go if we needed to run away: screens announcing the names of cities five days’ ride from here, numbered door after numbered door, queues of people, the buses waiting like mastodons in the forecourt, ready to make their slow lumbering progress under the English Channel and off across the continent.

But none of that makes any sense. I have Mum to think of. David, thousands of miles away on his months-long orchestra fellowship, the opportunity of a lifetime. My keyboard. My home. Besides, I have an image of the egg somehow finding me wherever I go, having to repeat the whole laying experience, perhaps – the cramps and the nausea and the blood – only to be confronted by the same white face.

I swoon, grab a bollard to steady myself. With a sense of the inevitable I force myself to turn back, walking now as my heart rate slows. My feet move automatically, like cogs in a wheel, but at the same time drag as if fighting magnetic repulsion. The thought of what’s waiting at home is terrible, but at the same time I want nothing else but to return. I reach my street. Terraces line the road on either side, their uniformity underlining their indifference. Finally, I’m standing outside my house, counting my breaths, trying to talk myself into going in, burning with both curiosity and dread, like the time we went to see my music teacher’s open casket. It’s hard to believe how ordinary my house looks. If it were an imposing Edwardian, majestic Georgian or august Victorian, perhaps I could just about believe that something impossible had happened inside. But looking at the flat façade with its seventies weatherboard and hanging red tiles, I can almost convince myself that nothing’s happened at all. That I’ve imagined the whole thing.

Except, deep down, I know that I haven’t.

I drag my feet up the path towards the poky porch. Time for my suburban nightmare to pick up where it left off.

I reach for the white plastic door handle, try to turn it.

I’m locked out.

My legs give way; I no longer have the strength to stand, and I’m crying tears which warm my frosty cheeks, while my fingertips and buttocks in their thin leggings turn to ice.

My next-door neighbour has our key. She’s the first person we spoke to on the street; invited us for tea when we first moved. Now I do her shopping once a week, and sometimes pop in to play for her on the piano.

I push myself up from the cold stony ground. I force my aching muscles to her front door, which looks the same as mine, like every door on the street. I ring the bell. I can picture the egg, find myself hoping that it’s all right. What seems like an age passes while my shivers build and anxiety clamours in my chest. Finally, I see a light coming on in the hall, make out a shuffling figure through the floral frosted glass. Mary opens the door, her wrinkled face a question mark below her helmet of tight ringlet curls. She wants to chat. ‘You look a bit flushed, dear.’

I rush her. ‘So sorry – I’m locked out; could I get my key? Sorry to interrupt your evening.’

She looks alarmed by my haste; I use the cold as an excuse, hopping from one foot to another.

‘Hope everything’s OK,’ she says, meaningfully, as if the words are in italics. Ordinarily seeing her would make me feel calm, make everything solid. But today I need to get into my house with the urgency of someone about to lose control of their bladder; someone who, like me, cannot trust their own body to keep it together. I need to know that the egg is all right. That nothing has happened to it. That it’s still there in the bathroom, in my old white towel, white against white against white.

She rummages in a mahogany bureau near the door for a few moments, then extracts the key, dangling it from the treble-clef keychain I must have given her.

I take it as quickly as I can without snatching it, hurry a thank-you and yet another ‘sorry’ from the side of my mouth, and rush back to my door, guilty but revived. The key stumbles in the lock but then catches. The door handle gives. Mary’s watching to check I’ve got in safely; I give her a determinedly cheery wave, and catch no more than a glimpse of her waving back as I scramble over the threshold, not bothering to kick off my shoes. My heart pounds as I thud up the stairs.

It’s there, a perfect oval. Eternal, self-perpetuating.

The relief of finding it safe is accompanied by the sudden urge to eat. I’ve forgotten to have dinner, and now all I can think about is a rare steak, oozing scarlet, something I can get my teeth into. I leave the egg in the bathroom, for lack of a better place to put it, and hurry down to the kitchen, a small strip of light in my dark house. But I open the fridge, and funnily enough there are no Michelin stars waiting there. A half-eaten packet of frankfurters will have to do. Two minutes in the microwave later and their smoky meat is burning the roof of my mouth.

I return to the bathroom and sit, cradling the egg in the bath; I lose several hours to terrified wondering, and then it’s gone midnight and exhaustion hits me like a double-decker bus. Going to sleep almost seems too ordinary, but for lack of a better idea, I take the egg into the bedroom.