Fuck you hard, Art, fuck you in all the ways and also in ways they haven’t invented yet

I am popping all over, like a carcass in a furnace.

‘JENNY,’ my mother says. ‘Step away from the computer.’

‘Fuck off, Mother.’

‘Jenny, I’m going to take the computer now, okay.’ She does it like she’s defusing a bomb. Like I’m packing explosives in my vest. ‘Just – breathe, and stay calm.’

I collapse on the floor. ‘He’s fucking seeing her.’

‘Who? What?’

‘Art is seeing Suzy Brambles. I mean, can you believe that? And everyone tells me I’m paranoid and I overthink – well, you know what? The paranoid people are on to shit.’

‘I’m just going to put this down over here.’

Then it dawns on me.

She stalked him on my Instagram. This explains everything.

‘OH MY GOD.’

‘What?’

‘GET ME A GIN, MOTHER.’

She gets me a gin. I am in the same position when she comes up: calcified. I take the gin without moving my face or indeed any part of myself.

‘Okay, darling, there you go. Now, tell me, slowly, what happened.’

I reel off the intel. ‘Suzy Brambles has posted a picture of Art’s arm and he has commented underneath using a nickname he used to call me. It’s an utterly sociopathic act, by both of them.’

‘Let me see.’

I open my laptop for my mother and show her.

She sighs. ‘Oh darling, that doesn’t prove anything. Your imagination is filling in the gaps and joining up dots to create the wrong picture. You were always too good at that.’

‘He just confirmed he’s with her now!’

‘That doesn’t mean anything. It could be a one-off. You’re over-analysing, as usual.’

‘You have to leave.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t do this. We can’t be friends. I want you to go.’

IF

you’re going to have a miscarriage I can highly recommend doing it during a production of Macbeth. It’s not only thematically apt but it means you get to exact revenge on an overpriced theatre seat by bleeding all over it.

We’d gone to see some Shakespeare because I was hankering for academia.

Pregnancy made me like that. Nostalgic. Elitist. Sedate. It was January. We were nine weeks. I was thinking, periodically (bemusedly) about August. The whole future had changed. My body was changing. I was being invaded. Realigned. Unutterably. Permanently.

And then, I wasn’t.