ART: She’s forced me to live with her, at least, and I’m so glad.

JENNY: Forced you?

ART: Yes, like you did. I never would have done it otherwise.

JENNY: I certainly did not.

ART: You did!

JENNY: No, Art, I really didn’t. Maybe it just suits you to feel like the adventuring wanderer, dragged in from the forest and civilised by a woman ennobled by her missionary status. But you’re not. I’m a lot less civilised than you, I can assure you. You don’t get to be the wild one tamed. You have absolutely no concept of what it is to be in a cage. You don’t get to be the adventurer who comes in from the storm to a woman’s cosy hearth. I never had a cosy hearth for you.

ART: I know it.

JENNY: So. Don’t get off on that one. And give Suzanne some credit.

ART: God.

JENNY: There, you see. It’s just like the beginning all over again. Me telling you off and you being impressed rather than insulted. A perfect circle.

ART: So you don’t despise me?

JENNY: No. [sighing] You sort of wasted my precious time, but you will always mean something to me, Art. I mean that. This is the heartfelt bit.

ART: Oh good, I’ve been waiting for this.

JENNY: We helped form each other. I will think about you every day in some way and I will hate you for that but with a deep, impossible, death-conquering love. And I’ll never be able to hear Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ without thinking fleetingly of you and what went wrong, and wondering whether you still want me in some way during festive times of year, even though we’ll never act on it. Again. And that is a modern classic, ruined. This is what you have done to me, Art. All that said, I would like us to try and be friends. I’ve never managed that with anyone else, but I’ve never really had an ex like you, and I think I do need you in my life, as a friend. I think I might be ready. I certainly feel like I can say anything to you now. Like, I don’t want us to talk like this.

ART: Like what?

JENNY: Like we’re reading off a script. Some kind of ‘how to talk to your ex’ script.

ART: Okay, so what do we do?

JENNY: I don’t know. Try and relax?

ART: Your speciality.

‘Hahah.’

I hear him breathe a couple of times and then he says, ‘Hey, I’ve got my new exhibition opening in spring. Scars and Girls. Will you come?’