I am spreading low fat butter on my toast and then I am eating it, but it’s not like I’m eating anything. When the toast is gone, I’m at the bottom of the stairs but I don’t remember walking down them. I don’t need to remember these things. It’s the fat. With it not being there, it’s like there’s cling film wrapped around my tongue. I don’t think it’s eating because nothing has been given to me. It’s more like something has been taken away.

Two months ago, I mentioned to a nurse that my throat had been hurting every day. The doctor sent me for tests, reluctant because it’s a chronic sore throat five years into Long Covid — a virus that gave me a nervous system disorder called POTS, that means the bits inside me don’t work right anymore. Probably just to do with that, isn’t it.

So then a second doctor is guiding a camera round the u-bend of my nose and throat. He didn’t tell me he was going to do this. I swallow it down as we watch the film on the screen in front of us and tears leak out of my left eye. He shows me my voice box. Two fingers in a peace sign. But the pink all around it is daubed with yellow and white. It doesn’t look right. He hands me a tissue for the mascara down one side of my face.

This will explain the acid reflux, he says and I have to tell him that, no, I’ve never had acid reflux. He shrugs. I ask questions. He keeps shrugging and I feel like I’m trying to negotiate something I can’t talk my way out. A week later, my GP receives a letter with a diagnosis of Laryngopharyngeal Reflux (LPR), or silent reflux. I learn the lower oesophageal sphincter that should put a plug on my stomach isn’t working properly. It’s allowing acid to creep up my throat where acid shouldn’t be, burning the more delicate parts of the body and hurting that throat every day.

I get given pills to reduce the acid in my stomach but they leave a breeze block where my stomach used to be, so I decide to follow a low acid diet instead. That way, nothing can even fountain back up inside me. The problem is, I already have dietary requirements. POTS has left me with not enough blood in my body. So I have to chug water to inflate myself, otherwise I can’t stand or think.

Then, with a reduced blood volume, if I eat food that has too high an impact on the body, the blood rushes to the stomach to digest it, away from the brain, meaning I crash so fast I fall asleep at the dinner table. I’ve been eating a low glycemic diet to avoid it. No white rice, potatoes — no white anything. Only small portions, and it’s all wholewheat shit. But stacking a low acid diet on top of this means I now lose: tomatoes, onion, garlic, citrus, and most importantly, fat. Five things that are, give or take, the basis of every meal on earth.

Over the next month, I get an email saying I didn’t get the £10,000 grant I applied for. I stand in Tesco and all the sauces I can imagine are gone. All meals become dry. I overhear a teenage exchange student from America on a tirade, telling his friends the government should kill gay people, like God used to. I email the school I can see on his uniform. I read a paper that says 60% of people with POTS develop some form of reflux. I can’t have anything with bubbles in. I learn milk is acidic. The house I rent has no insulation and the heating bill scares me. I learn I can’t chug water anymore or I’ll overfill my stomach and push the acid up. I watch a video about LPR where the woman says I have to chew my food thoroughly because the stomach has no teeth. Lying down is the quickest way to reduce POTS symptoms but LPR says I can’t lie flat anymore without risking the movement of acid. I learn you have to sleep on your left so that your stomach is lower than your throat; I sleep on my right. I am fast becoming depressed.

Constant acidic damage leads to mutations that can cause throat cancer. It happened to a family member. He looks at me across our tweaked Christmas dinner. At least you know it’s there.

I stop seeing friends because we meet over food and I can’t think of anything I can order without blitzing my throat that is slow to heal. But I don’t want to be depressed, so I eat a banana before I head out to see Priya. Not supposed to eat for hours before I sleep, not supposed to eat before I do anything physical. I’ve spent a month hungry and mad with it. I want to talk about anything other than food, but when I ask what book she read last, it’s Asako Yuzuki’s ‘Butter,’ translated by Polly Barton. We laugh and she tells me not to read it because it has so many descriptions of food — not while I’ve got all this on my mind.

Still, I find myself watching mukbangs. Videos showing how different countries make their scrambled eggs. Travel vlogs that never leave food markets. Durian fruit, cheung fun, really good burgers. I’m so hungry that I start reading Butter on New Year’s Day like a meal I’ve travelled a long way to experience. The novel is about a journalist in Japan who visits a prison to speak with a woman convicted of killing three wealthy men she had been dating, and doting on, cooking them elaborate dishes from the very best ingredients.

I ate more of the book every day. I ate it fast. In an effort to secure an exclusive interview with Kajii, journalist Rika buys those same ingredients and cooks those very same meals. Kajii is fat by Japanese standards. She loves butter. She loves rich food. She went to exclusive cooking classes for Japanese high society, paid for with the money of her suitors. What Kajii hates is other women, describing them as corpse-like for denying themselves the food they really want in order to maintain a thin beauty standard. Corpse-like and therefore ‘terrified of anyone with a sense of life about them.’

The book does a clean job of making us question whether Kajii is in fact a manipulative, murderous criminal or whether she is just so liberated compared to everyone around her that she is dangerous for other reasons. This ambiguity is crafted so well, the book is lenticular. And then there are the food descriptions with a Nigella-like intimacy. Moments of clarity and discovery in the journalism, and then aching, private fear, partitioned like good knife work. I felt glad it was a bestseller. I felt sad when the meal was over.

So much of Butter is about desire. Figuring out what you want, getting it, and then consuming it, whether it’s a turkey, a man, a job, whatever. I think I was Kajii before I got sick, gratifying myself in a million ways every day because I could and there was no reason not to. I think reading it explained the potential depression back to me — because I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep a sense of life about me when health gets in the way of gratification so abruptly, so many times a day, it’s like a fridge door slamming shut. Takeaway apps deleted. No, sorry, I can’t come tonight.

When Rika recreates Kajii’s recipes, she puts on more and more weight. That’s liberation. And I felt sad for having lost weight, and being able to see how far away I am from my own desires. I learn I can get the top of the stomach stapled tighter, but then I can never lift anything heavy again in case it pops. And people keep telling me I’m so healthy now, like it’s a good job I have another chronic illness. They wish they did too. They say I’ll find new things I like. But when I walk down the stairs, I can feel every step now. Can hear my boyfriend three rooms away cracking open another can of coke, and I feel rabid because:

I want to squeeze lemon directly into that can, so that it misses the opening and leaves faint yellow droplets pooling on the rim. I want to take the can off him and drink, and have the sour sting me before the sweet.

I want to take spoonfuls of chilli oil and bucket them over sticky rice.

I want bolognese cooked for hours with a full tin of anchovies and a splash of milk.

I want those Mini Egg chocolate bars that are all over Tesco even though it’s only January.

I want a full carton of the salt and pepper chicken wings from Hang Fung on Park Road.

I want to spread full fat butter over the single piece of toast I used to eat before bed. Butter in a layer so thick it’s still a pale yellow, and just about cold on the very top. And then I want to make a second slice and go to sleep without this hunger keeping me up.

🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

if you’re here at the end of the review please leave a 🧈 butter emoji on our instagram so i know you were here 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈 sign up to our patreon at 1 pound a month if you want to support another year of writing 🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈