I tell my mother about Suzy Brambles. As I tell her, she sips her Bramble and looks occasionally at my phone. When I’ve finished telling her, I exhale and take a sip of my drink. My mother is studying me carefully.

‘So let me get this straight,’ she says. ‘You’re upset because someone you don’t know might not like a version of you that doesn’t really exist.’

‘I assure you, it’s far more complicated than that.’

‘The trouble with your generation, darling, is that you think you invented the internet.’

‘We … did. You’re thinking of cocaine and blow jobs. Although I never thought you were too au fait with drugs.’

Linda raises her eyebrows. I recall an incident, I was thirteen or fourteen, when my mother found a twig in my blazer pocket that had fallen off a tree on the way home from school. JENNIFERRRRRRRRRRR, she’d shrieked through the house. I sloped downstairs and found her in the kitchen, with the twig held aloft. Is this DRUGS?

No, Ma, I’d said coolly (I was the master of teen exasperation by then). It’s a twig. Is the menopause making you this insane?

‘So smart, aren’t you,’ my mother says. ‘Well, you might have invented the internet but you didn’t invent all the feelings that come with it. The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. Can I give you my honest opinion?’

‘Can I say no?’

‘This is all about attention, Jennifer. You cultivated a twitch when you were eleven, remember? She did, Linda. She sat in front of the TV night after night, practising a facial twitch, until it started happening spontaneously. She changed her handwriting every year for the start of the September term. My little chameleon. Now, how am I supposed to think this time you’re not just finding some new way of getting people to look at a version of you?’

‘Because I feel all this deeply.’

‘But why? What do you want from her?’

‘Jack Nicholson has been described as “a very social loner”. I feel much the same way. I am happiest in my own company against a backdrop of general adoration. I want to be adored in my absence.’

My mother laughs. ‘Sounds a lot like death, darling.’

‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it.’

‘Drink your drink.’

‘Stop looking at me.’

‘Show me her, then,’ my mother says. ‘This fabled Suzy Brambles.’

‘Don’t say her name.’

‘Why?’

‘It makes me uncomfortable.’

I don’t want it in the air.

My mother nods slowly, staring at me.

‘Don’t give me shit about this. You’re the one who talks to ghosts.’

‘Yes, I do, don’t I? Now, show me this enigma who is tormenting my daughter! I command it!’