Читать книгу Adults - Emma Jane Unsworth - Страница 18

I don’t reply to my mother. Instead, I go back for another dose of Suzy Brambles. But lo, what’s this? A new post! I devour it.

She has been out in Soho. She has imbibed too many shots. She has succumbed to a falafel kebab. Soho … So … close, and yet so far. I give it a Deep Like. You really feel likes like that. Everyone must. And then I comment:

LIVING YOUR BEST BAB LYF

With no kisses, to look nonchalant. Then I wonder whether I should have put Livin’ with an apostrophe rather than Living, to sound more youthful. Then I go through Suzy’s follows again just to check I am still there. It makes me feel strong to see myself amongst her chosen people. I know she is seeing what I’m doing, even if she doesn’t feel the need to reach out. I notice that she has started following Art, which is odd because he hardly ever posts anything, just the odd nice coffee or cool job he’s been on.

Music strikes up from the living room downstairs – which means Sid is DJing again. I did once tell her that those decks are strictly a weekend-only activity and then I felt so old I instantly relented and brought home a load of shit-maddening frenetic dance records, just to disprove my own point. It’s like when I left a bad Airbnb review – the only bad one I’ve ever left – and the host replied so viciously that I left another review on another site that was completely complimentary and over the top and I got so carried away writing it that by the end of it I was convinced I had been wrong and was actually madly in love with the place, so I booked another stay there. They declined my booking.

I send Kelly a message:

Okay I’m dying here. I can’t stand these people in my house. I’m trapped, terrified of the future and sick of pretending. Send help

Kelly doesn’t reply, which isn’t like her. I hope she’s not in some way trying to manage me. I thought we’d made an agreement to not do the passive-aggressive thing with each other. We just save that for everyone else in our lives. I look at her Instagram and like her two most recent pictures, out of duty. She is my friend, after all.

My favourite rental flat was above a furniture shop. It had a shower-head in the bath I had to trap under my foot while I soaped my armpits. When I sat on the toilet at night, silverfish scooted around my toes. One time, a cockroach made a cameo. The saving grace was a grubby little balcony, complete with two upturned buckets where I could sit with a friend and smoke. Over the road was a wicker warehouse. The first time Kelly came round I said: Don’t ask me who would want to live in a flat like this because I have no idea.

She replied: Someone who wants to assassinate a wicker salesman.

I said: Kelly, comments like that are why you are the love of my lifetime.

She said: Well, it’s not like I had much choice about you being mine.

I don’t know what she meant by that. She’s funny, Kelly, sometimes. She fights her feelings. It’s like on some level she isn’t satisfied with the way things have turned out. And I wonder whether that’s just motherhood or something else inside her.

I try and relax by looking at the page of someone I was mildly obsessed with for a while when things started getting bad, @Virginiaginia. She’s luscious, and I don’t use that word lightly. She’s a cultural commentator married to a pop scientist. I go to her Twitter. I realise I am secretly hoping she has split up with the pop scientist. I am looking for evidence of this. Why? Schadenfreude? Solidarity? I start looking through HIS photos to see if SHE has liked them, to work out whether they’re still going out. I’m fucking cracked! But I can’t stop. The compulsion is all-consuming. I require the 360 on this. I deserve the 360 on this. They have liked each other’s posts, but maybe they’d like each other’s posts MORE if they’re not together any more, in that generous, fake way exes do. It’s looking hopeful – there’s no mention of him otherwise for weeks and weeks … I click through to her blog. The most recent post is called ‘Starting Over’. Aha! V. promising! I read, ravenous. Drat, the post is about some recent foray into watercolour. Ah. So disappointing. They’re dreadful paintings, too. And prove nothing. I slide back to her Twitter. There – I find it. Ten weeks ago.

A picture of them at a barbecue.

I console myself with the fact that they could have split up within the past ten weeks.

As I lie waiting to fall asleep I listen to Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear. I wonder whether I will ever love anyone like that.

Like I love Father John Misty, I mean.

(I wonder if he’s still with his wife?)