You can tell a lot about someone from whether they can handle an uncomfortable silence. If they ride it out or snap it off. Patience seemed to be a trait lacking in those who had married in, as Lucy was the next one to attempt conversation.

I’ll tell you a little bit about Lucy. Lucy runs an independent online business, by which I mean she loses money on the internet periodically. She is a Small Business Owner in the same way Andy is a Feminist, in that she declares it loudly, often, and she’s the only one who believes it.

I won’t name the company because I don’t want to get sued, but I recall her being promoted to Vice Executive Regional President (or something) a while back, along with about ten thousand others. An arbitrary title, unless of course it was referring to her own vice of badgering friends into buying shit they didn’t need, in which case she was certainly presidential. That was also why she’d got the car I’d seen out front, which according to her post on Instagram was a freebie reward from the program. I knew that it was actually just a lease, and the gifted component was merely a monthly contribution, with incredibly strict conditions that, if breached, revoked the ‘free’ part and left the owner with a very expensive loan. That is, the car was free until it wasn’t.

I was sure Lucy no longer fulfilled the conditions and was paying for it out of her own pocket. But that was key to the whole thing: to never let the reality outweigh the image of success. A friend who is a car salesman told me that he’d had to ban a certain type of woman from taking photos with cars on the lot, pretending to have just earned one to post about online. They’d leave infuriated, clanking away in their smoke-belching hatchback with some giant novelty red bow unused in the back. This was why, you’ll understand, I redacted the model of Lucy’s car, because they are very specifically linked to a certain company.

Lucy commits to the rhetoric; she describes it as a business and tenses up whenever anyone says that specific word. So out of respect, I won’t use it. I’ll just say the Egyptians built them.

In an attempt to fit in with the family, Erin used to dutifully attend Lucy’s parties, buying the cheapest of whatever product she was shilling that month. Once home, she’d type up an invoice with a restaurant name and a value as a multiple of how boring or arduous the party had been, and leave it on my pillow: In-law Tax Invoice: Eyelash curler $15; rate x 3 (make-up tutorial rate); >1 hour, overtime x 1.5 = $52.50: Bella’s Italian.