Dear E,

Over the past months I have developed strong feelings for you, and I think you feel the same way.

I used to speak to loads of girls on here but I didn’t really feel like I connected with many of them; none of them saw the world in the same way that we do. I feel like we are unique and have a similar outlook on life, one that is so different from so many of our peers. We both know that there is more to our existentialism than life in these streets. Sometimes when I am on the bus home, I think that you must be out there too – maybe even on this bus – and I feel a sense of peace.

I do not know what will happen next for us. I feel like in order for us to take things to the next level we should meet up in person, but I also don’t want us to ruin whatever fragile and beautiful thing we have made. But I want to find a way for us to take this relationship on to new heights as you have become such a central part of my life.

x

Ellen’s eyes leaped over the sentences, so that she read everything in a jumble and had to keep going back and rereading everything a second and then a third time. As the message became a coherent whole at last, she squirmed a little: she had not expected anything so effusive. She closed her eyes for a second, trying not to imagine what Kate would think if she could read this. Kate did not have much of a sense of romance.

Still, ignoring the words themselves – the execution of his love letter – the meaning was everything she could possibly have wanted. He wanted their ‘relationship’ to reach ‘new heights’. He was calling it a ‘relationship’! Surely, this meant that they must meet. She wondered what she’d wear.

Another message was flashing in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

rainham_romeo1991: i don’t want or expect a reply tonight. or necessarily at all

rainham_romeo1991: but i feel like this letter expresses some of the way i feel about you

rainham_romeo1991: anyway i’m going to go now, i think

rainham_romeo1991: let’s speak tomorrow x

Before Ellen could type a word, he’d signed out.

She stared dumbly at the screen.

16. Alexa

Alexa had the foreboding sense that Ellen’s big reveal approached. She was correct.

‘And so, one Sunday, I got this letter …’ Ellen paused. She pressed her lips together. ‘It was very intense. Sort of like it was written by an algorithm to make a teenage girl lose her mind.’ She let the line land.