‘Judy – R. Kelly is a sexual abuser. Can you turn it off, immediately please?’

Judy stares at me blankly, and turns the volume right down, but not totally off.

I go and sit at my desk, kicking off my shoes. Bloody office politics.

‘Here are some packages, Ol,’ our receptionist Colin says, chipper as usual, dropping a heavy pile of parcels onto my desk. ‘Feels like clothes inside.’ He presses down on it with his thumb.

‘Yeah. Thanks Colin,’ I say, not looking up from my desk.

‘Not excited about your new garms?’ he says, sitting down on a swivel chair and crossing his legs.

‘No. I ordered them from this American website, they took months to arrive, and … well, now I don’t even need them any more.’

I’d ordered them for Jacob’s brother’s wedding, months ago when we were still together. These clothes arriving is just another sad reminder of everything that’s changed.

‘Fair enough. Hey, wanna know something depressing?’

‘Not really.’ Read the room, Colin.

‘It’s not proper depressing – more like, funny-depressing.’

‘All right, go on.’

‘I’ve just downloaded this app that tells you how many books you could have written if you calculate all the tweets you’ve written over the years. I’ve tweeted 5,000 times,’ he tells me. ‘So that’s 700,000 characters. So that’s definitely like two books.’

‘Why would you do that?’

Colin gets out his phone and goes onto my Twitter page.

‘Wow—’

‘No. Stop.’

‘You’ve tweeted 52,000 times. So, you could have written, like, fifteen books by now,’ he says, deadpan.

I want to whack my head on the desk. I imagine blood going everywhere, splashing onto Colin.

‘Can I make you a tea? Also, this new eye cream got delivered today for you all to test out.’ He hands me a gold cardboard box. ‘You do look a bit tired my love.’

‘Cheers,’ I say, blankly. ‘And yes, two sugars please.’

I’m seeing Bea, Isla and Cec tonight. Maybe I’ll take a few boxes of freebies from the office for them; they always seem to love free beauty bits and bobs. I can’t wait to see them. I feel like a shell of my usual self. I guess I haven’t fully processed the break-up yet. I need some perspective from my mates.

Suddenly my eyes fill with tears. I’d given myself a good talking-to in the mirror this morning. I’ve done my crying, enough’s enough. But clearly the well’s not empty just yet. I take myself off to the best place to have a shameless cry: the .dot toilets. They are the newest and fanciest part of the whole office. I take a box of tissues with me and try to cry quietly on the seat of the loo. Twenty minutes later, there’s a tap on the glazed glass door.

‘Ol? Ol … it’s Colin.’

‘Oh, for god’s sake, Colin – not now.’

‘Sorry love, it’s just … your tea is cold and Gill has said she needs you for a meeting.’