I never told anyone about my extra head. It nestled on my right shoulder, and grew with me. It was a pimple when I was a child, grew to the size of a carbuncle on puberty, and by the time I was an adult it was about half the size of my own. But which was ’my own’? I did begin to wonder. Anyhow, I thought discretion was the better part of valour, so I concealed it by artfully-tied scarves and polo necks.

Its face was slightly better-looking than mine. The eyes were greener, the hair was more flaxen, the ears set flatter to the head, the nose straighter. The voice, though, was slightly more shrill, with a metallic edge. It might be construed as cute. At first I thought that the extra head would be biddable, as it was only an appendage, after all. But that was not how it turned out. 

It became increasingly acerbic, unruly even. I myself (you see what I did there?) am rather tactful and cautious: I tend to think before I speak, I tend to be measured and discreet. But my appendage did not, was not. She specialised in plain speaking, as she called it, but what she meant by that was insolence and offence. I would say to a friend,  ’that outfit’s not too bad’, and the head would shout ’you’ve got to be kidding! With her size and colouring? She looks like an elephant wearing a marquee!’ When I was asked to comment on someone’s writing, I would soberly suggest that they work on method and structure,  and then the head would yell, ’Christ! Intellectually, his knuckles are trailing along the ground! He should give up now!’ But what was worse was when the head started to criticise and undermine me. She knew me well, knew my sensitive spots, and unerringly she would skewer them, screaming, ’You are clumsy. You give too much. You show too much cleverness.’ It couldn’t be called self-sabotage, as she wasn’t me exactly. But she had come from me, she was flesh of my flesh. She made me uncomfortable. Something would have to be done.

But how to get rid of her? I recalled an earlier occasion when I had a skin tag on my neck, and, lacking the money to have it surgically removed, I had tied a piece of thread round it and cut off its blood supply. After a few days, it had shrivelled and dropped off. Perhaps there was something to be said for that method of removal, though disposal might be more tricky. Oh well. Here goes.

I found an old skipping rope (with handles still attached) and, standing in front of the mirror, put the rope around the neck and began to squeeze. The head made a gurgling sound, coughed and choked, went blue and fell silent. The handles had clacked together alarmingly throughout, and they continued to do so rather merrily as I walked about afterwards. 

It took ages for the head to wither and drop off, and the smell made me self-conscious. Folk looked askance. And then it (or she) dropped off as I was running for a train, and it bowled along the platform like a malodorous football and was lost forever. I thought I would feel better, but I didn’t. Not at all. I had lost something, killed something. I missed its voice, its imprecations, its reproaches. I began to wonder how I might hear them again.