‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think so, almost.’

Kelly puts a five-pound note and two pound coins on the table. She gets up.

‘I meant what I said about the way we met,’ she says. ‘Because right now, I don’t think I actually like you. That’s the honest truth, Jenny. I don’t like you. We’ve never had a friendship. We had a romance begun by a meet not-so-cute.’

She walks out. I stare at my kombucha. I suddenly remember people might be looking at me. I take a picture of the kombucha.

To all the ferments I’ve loved before

I post it as I pay the bill.

BREATHING FOR ONE

Towards the very end, Art started refusing to do social engagements as a couple. He started cancelling his attendance at birthdays, weddings, drinks, everything. I was busy with my own preoccupations. I couldn’t bring myself to wear anything I’d worn while I was pregnant and charity-shopped most of my cardigans and jeans. I couldn’t even bear to wear the same perfumes, so they got shoved in the charity bags, too, even though I wasn’t sure whether an opened bottle of perfume was sellable or would be classed as tampered with. I thought I might be being superstitious – feeling like those garments were somehow cursed, or would bring back bad memories. But the truth was, I was tampered with. I felt like a different woman. Nothing fitted me or suited me from my previous life. I was less fleshly. More insect. I had eyes and ears in strange places.

At Sonny’s birthday party – a big one, his thirteenth – Art made his excuses ten minutes before we were due to leave the house. I passed them on to Kelly and Sonny. I was the go-between. The middle-woman. The PA to his flakiness.

Sonny said: ‘He can’t be bothered with us any more, can he?’

Kelly said: ‘Not that he ever really could.’

I had a row with Art about it when I got back. I told him what Kelly and Sonny had said.

‘I’m not playing happy families on your terms, is that it?’ he said. ‘I’ve been there plenty of times. I’ve ummed and I’ve ahhed in all the right places. Give me a break.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘You were really playing the part for me.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you appreciate that.’

‘Are we a family, Art? Is that what we are?’

‘I feel like you’re about to trap me with this question. It’s a trick, isn’t it?’

‘Because you’re never here. You’re always out.’

‘YOU’RE always out,’ he said, banging his head with his hand. ‘The lights are on but no one’s home.’

He was wrong about that. Sometimes I closed my eyes at night and it was like there was a light still on at the back of my eyes.

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