‘I say it all with my eyes.’

‘Tell me one opinion you have.’

We fell into silence.

Back at the apartment he listed out the systems he’d organised so he wouldn’t be able to listen to the track. Then he locked himself in the bathroom, ran the taps and listened to the track.

I knew he’d been talking to other women online. Deleting his browser history was something he just wasn’t interested in. To pass the time, I rummaged through his clothes. He had them delivered from a company that dressed the modern man. It was all decided by filling out an oblique questionnaire about your childhood, when you lost your illusions, et cetera. He tried to get me into it. ‘How was your childhood?’ ‘Not good,’ I scrawled and handed the questionnaire back to him. He said I didn’t deserve clothes and he was probably correct.

In the wardrobe I found his favourite coat and slipped in a printout of the most horrific post on the forum. I also included my fortune from the fortune cookies we had eaten earlier. I guess I still wanted us to have open communication. I couldn’t let go. I could never let go. I didn’t know how. A part of me was disgusted by how he treated me and another part was profoundly grateful.

Every day, there were two versions of me. The one who stayed and watched him with other women, leaning in, laughing – and then afterwards in cabs: listening to him object, argue, tell me I was a lot of work, a lot of hard fucking work. The me who had dreams where I climbed high, took a single breath and hit the ground like a shirt made of the cheapest, thinnest material. Then the other me – walking fast, with purpose, down the shaded street.

*

It was a cold winter and I stayed inside the apartment most days. I did my make-up and observed myself in the mirror, fearfully, as if I was an animal capable of bizarre and impulsive movements. I practised my accents so the neighbours would think there was a flurry of people who lived next door, a cultural mix, instead of just a comedian’s girlfriend. I started watching the show, which, to my boyfriend’s fury, had been moved to a daytime slot. Onscreen he played a professor – his waistcoat ill-buttoned, his face clouded with grief for the modern world, all his actions, romantic or otherwise, hilarious and large-hearted. The dialogue was bad and it bothered me to hear him say those lines. I felt implicated in a way, like a woman who sends her husband to war without even a kind word.