And then I do my regular thing: I go through Suzy Brambles’ follows to check she is still following me. It’s just a habit, really. A formality. It’s the extra dopamine kick I need tonight, seeing myself there, amidst the …

Wait.

No.

I am not where I usually am.

My heart plummets.

My thumb panics.

I go out of the app and go in again.

I am still not there.

I turn my phone off.

Turn it on again.

I go through her follow list twice – no mean feat, there are over six hundred people on there. But, it would seem, I am no longer one of them.

I bend my knees and do some heavy breathing.

MIA SAYS

It’s clear you’re heartbroken, Jenny.

She pulls me upright and takes my drink.

‘I’m really not that bothered about Art.’ My voice is a pip-squeak.

‘You’ve gone ashen!’

‘It’s all the Aperol.’

‘You’ve only had two. You seemed like the perfect couple. Those first photos he took of you! The ones that blew up. They captured AN AGE. They characterised an entire summer of my life.’

‘What we always had was a solid friendship, and that is what we still have,’ I say, measuredly. ‘So it’s not really a break-up, more a … change of definition in terms of our relationship. Who needs to label things in this day and age anyway? It’s much more progressive to keep things loose. We’re just as close, we just don’t have sex. But we weren’t having that much sex anyway. So in terms of the day to day, nothing has really changed.’

Mia puts her arm around me. ‘I think you’ll get back together,’ she says. She looks reassured. ‘It’s just a blip.’

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Would you excuse me, Mia? I have to go now.’

‘Of course.’ She pulls off her arm. I exhale and move away.

‘See you Wednesday.’

‘Take the time you need.’

‘See you Wednesday.’

I WALK

through Soho – awful, extraordinary Soho, teeming with the weekend-drunk and lumbering tourists. I slip into the M&S off Oxford Street, go to the booze section and buy two bottles of white wine with Renaissance paintings on the bottles. I always feel better about buying wine when the bottle has art on it. It’s classy bingeing.

I drink one bottle on the way to the Tube, necking it in tepid gobfuls. I stop outside the Tube where a homeless man is sitting with some Marvel figurines laid out on a bed-sheet. I hand him a pound.

‘Thanks love,’ he says, readjusting Spiderman. ‘Have a nice evening.’

‘No chance of that,’ I say. ‘The worst thing has happened. I have had the most horrific day.’

‘Sorry to hear that, love,’ he says.

‘If someone likes you for months, what makes them suddenly stop liking you?’

He looks at me. ‘Fella left you?’