Please let me know asap if you’re about. I can come to the flat, or somewhere near you?

Let me know.

Jacob

Isn’t it strange how ex-boyfriends suddenly become more formal the minute they’re placed in the ‘ex’ category? The inversion of how close we once were. This was the guy who once squeezed the blackheads on my shoulders and now he’s dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, putting capital letters in all the right places, with a new blunt sign-off. His message seems strangely urgent. I don’t know what to say. I need time to think. I always longed to be Sabrina the Teenage Witch for this reason, because she could point her finger and freeze time. I want that. Imagine freezing time for an hour or two so you could sort your shit out. If I could have some time away from work, my phone, my responsibilities to just think, maybe all of this would be easier. I glance back down at my phone. I know I owe Jacob a reply. I stroke my phone screen pensively, and hesitate. I write out the text slowly.

Yes, pick a place and I’ll meet you there.

Olive.

I hover my finger over the send button. I reread it a few times. I wait a few more seconds. 1-2-3 … Sent.

‘Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer.’

Gloria Steinem, Chelsea Lately, October 2011

13

2017

It was Friday night. Jacob and I both got home from work around 6.30 p.m. That was early for me; Gill loved to dump last-minute work on me in the afternoon. Jacob went to the gym (we have a small one downstairs in our building), and while he did that I wrote ten pages of the weird crime novel I was experimenting with in front of the TV. It’s called Blue Assassin, and centres around a kidnapped dolphin: Splash with a dark twist. I was typing, deleting, typing, deleting. I heard the lock turn in the door and Jacob appeared huffing and all sweaty from an intense session. He came into the living room and planted a kiss on my lips and sat down next to me.

‘Jacob! Don’t sit on the sofa when you’re gross.’

‘It’s only a bit of sweat. You love smelling my sweaty armpits,’ he said, laughing.

‘Go and have a shower before you sit down, this sofa cost us an arm and a leg. You stink!’

He tried to give me a cuddle and I jokily tried to push him away.

‘Come in the shower with me,’ he whispered in my ear, and took my hand. I followed him into the bathroom, enjoying the feeling of being wanted by him.

He stripped off. We both got in the shower. We put on some music, shampooed each other’s hair, our faces sliding off each other as we kissed, and then we wrapped each other in huge bathroom towels that had been heated up on the radiator. I enjoyed that warmth of knowing someone else’s body so well. Every nook and cranny. He nodded to the bedroom. We’d done this hundreds of times, of course. From the shower to the bedroom. But that time I freaked out – majorly. These episodes were turning into a bit of a habit and I think Jacob had started to notice. On the surface, I didn’t know why. But then I unpicked it a bit, and I figured out exactly what it was. I had just come off my contraceptive pill because it wasn’t ‘agreeing’ with me. The side-effects were so aggressive: major spots, mood swings, couldn’t fit into my clothes any more. I felt as if I’d had a personality transplant and I didn’t like the idea of not behaving like myself. He walked out into the bedroom and I followed him.