Her last night she went to the hotel buffet. She spread a napkin across her lap. She asked the receptionist for paper and a pen. She stayed in and sat on the wire chair on her balcony. The heat was immovable; it was a wall. There was a storm starting. She could feel it in the heat. Reality was thinner in heat like this. The light reflected different shapes on the concrete. On every floor people moved around, fleeing or preparing to return to their mangled lives. On the top of the first sheet of hotel paper she wrote, ‘My life is my own.’ She remembered the model-box, the world pulled from her boyfriend’s imagination. She knew she could keep doing this, or some version of this for the rest of her life, but it wouldn’t be freedom and she wanted freedom. If you wanted a place that was lawless, you had to invent it yourself.

She was making her mind up in a way she had never done before. She was leaving a part of herself behind. She knew if she was going to do it, she would have to do it all. That night, on the hotel stationery, she started her first play. It would be about suffering; it would be about survival. It would be proof that she was alive. It would star two girls. It would be called: Abortion, A Love Story.

PUTTING ON A SHOW

‘Can I start over?’

Lucy was auditioning for a play and Natasha sat three rows from the back, watching her. Her chest was tight. Onstage Lucy was doing some approximation of walking, but the floor wasn’t responding to her touch. The floor was against her. Natasha wondered how all Lucy’s gifts had vanished. She looked like she was contemplating a problem up there and that problem was herself. She was the worst actress Natasha had ever seen. It was distressing to witness this performance.

A member of the acting troupe coughed. The acting troupe were infamous in the college: two boys and a singular girl, each of them dark-haired and intense, they stalked around as if they were in possession of a secret, unbearable knowledge of the outside world. Natasha thought they were pretentious assholes.They owned three sets of high cheekbones and came from acting dynasties. Their Shakespearean deconstructions were set in asylums and all they did, from what Natasha could tell, was grind their teeth. As if that’s all madness was: grinding your teeth. In these productions, the girl was always tied extravagantly with ropes. The ropes symbolised her lack of sexual freedom. The few minutes of these performances that Natasha had caught had depressed her beyond all reason.

Offstage, the girl slithered around the college, her eyes narrowed into slits, her mouth furious, as if expecting a sea to part for her, a seismic shift in the universe that would restore her to her rightful place. All three were rumoured to be in a tempestuous relationship, arguing loudly in the college coffee shop over what sounded like grim, selfish sex. Natasha’s gaze flitted from Lucy to check from their body language who was sleeping with who today. They were auditioning actresses for their latest project and Natasha had persuaded them to try Lucy. Natasha could tell, from their backs, that they were unimpressed. They wanted Lucy to be grateful for this opportunity. Lucy wasn’t grateful. Natasha suspected she had never been grateful in her life. She didn’t know how.