Hi! Just really wanted to reiterate how pleased I am about you and Suzy XXXX

I mean Suzanne

Floozanne

hahaha

Like. realy pleased so pleased

I do hope I can meet her son

Soon! Autocorrect makes drunks of us all!

Imagien if she had a son with you lol

I would be fine with tho

With it

I woud givei t my blessing

The blessed child

Speak soon! Xxxx

JUNK TEXTS

Hey Kel, how are you? X

Kelly?

Kellyyyyyyy

Keeeeeelllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

BURNOUT

I go to look at Suzy’s page but instead somehow find myself looking at Kelly’s. I go through all of Kelly’s recent posts, seeing where she’s been. It strikes me, surely, somewhere deep around my solar plexus, that I have missed some major events in her life. Not just Sonny’s birthday, but her birthday. Her mum’s seventieth. A trip up north for her great-aunt’s funeral. I look at who else she has been spending time with, who she is currently seeing as a more valid and mature person than I am. I look at who has been commenting on her posts. I see a comment I left on there ages ago, months ago – the last comment I left her, I think. On a picture of her doing a jewellery class with her mum, I have written:

HI HO SILVER!!!! WORK IT, YOU ABSOLUTE GEMS!!!! XXXXX

It is a comment I have obviously thought about a lot. The sight of my own rabid communication, the ECG spikes of exclamation marks, of my leaping emotions, is wearying.

Why am I looking at this now? Wearying my weary self with my own wearyingness?

I say it out loud. I say it right out of me. This is ill behaviour. I am ill.

THERAPY SESSION #2

The second therapist I saw, when Art’s pictures had hit the big time – possibly because Art’s pictures had hit the big time – listened straight-faced, even when I cracked jokes, and that put me off (Is it protocol, to be dour? I wanted to say), so I gabbled to fill the silence. I told her how I was scared and jealous of Art’s success, about how I was sure he’d leave me now for someone famous and cooler. I told her how I saw women flinging themselves at him, sometimes otherwise respectable women, desperate to touch the hem, and that made me feel even sadder and more scared and I wasn’t sure whether that was for him, or them, or me. After forty-five minutes had passed, I ran out of steam and material. She nodded sagely and said, ‘I think that was very good work for today, Jenny. Same time next week?’

‘I’m not sure – am I … meant to feel different?’

‘Not yet. Give it time.’

Time was something I knew I didn’t have much of. Time was already a fucking worry.

‘Okay.’