Whenever I can,

I think of a man,

Who said I had eyes

The colour of consommé soup.

We were in a group

Together

In Kazakhstan.

She read it back and nodded her head. ‘I mean, that’s kind of brilliant,’ she muttered to herself, making a note to take out all the capital letters when she started her second draft and right-justify it so it would look extra poetic. Putting it to one side, she wondered whether she might be able to come up with an entire collection by bedtime. In the meantime, she turned on her computer, feeling a buzz of adrenalin course through her veins at the fun she was about to have.

Some people had drugs.

Some people had Nintendos and played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild all day.

Elizabeth had this.

She logged on to Twitter’s desktop site but, rather than using her own personal profile, she typed in the fake one she’d created a few months earlier, @TruthIsASword. Removing a notebook from the top drawer of her desk, she glanced down at the list of phrases she’d written there and which she kept regularly updated. The first was #SingleMother and, when she typed this into the search engine, she looked at the first tweet that came up, posted by a woman in her early twenties who said that she hated spending so much money on nappies, especially since they were so bad for the environment, but that washing reusable cloth ones was proving to be a huge hassle. Elizabeth considered this for a few moments before typing a reply:

@TruthIsASword mebbe if u didnt sleep around you wouldn’t be on your own u grubby slut u even dirtier than ur skanky nappies lol #filthybitch

She watched the screen for a few moments, waiting for the likes to come in. As the numbers flipped up towards five, and then fifteen, and then thirty, she emitted a low groan of pleasure.

Turning back to her notebook, she read the next phrase: #PrideMarch. Apparently, planning was underway. There were thousands of mentions, but she focussed on a profile of a boy in his late teens who said that he was excited to go on his first #PrideMarch and wondered who else was going.

@TruthIsASword satan will be going tell him I said hi #BumBoy #BeKind

She sniggered and walked over to the mini fridge that she kept in the corner of her room, extracted a bottle of sparkling water and once again watched as the replies, retweets and likes flooded in. She answered a few, increasing the venom each time, before growing bored of the subject and moving on.