The night we met, Nicolette instantly started following me on everything, even Pinterest. She didn’t slide into my DMs; she galloped. Talk about chutzpah. ‘Reply All’ should really be an adjective, and Nicolette is very Reply All. I’d had a few drinks and liked her energy so I didn’t even do the wait-an-hour-to-look-casual thing (the equivalent of waiting three days after a date before you contact them): I went Full Fast Follow Back. I wanted her to see how fast I could love her, too. She was mine and I was hers and we both sensed it. We’ve had to talk, though, about the way we heat up and cool off on each other’s needs when we’ve been in physical proximity, because sometimes it does get intense, like we’re trying to bridge some sort of divide we didn’t feel when we were actually together.
Nicolette used to write for lefty rags but now she writes interior-design features mostly. I guess it’s true: we all get more right wing as we age. Over the past few months, our friendship has worked its way past desperate cordiality to a place of real assault. She’s wearing an antique wedding dress festooned with lace, teamed with tracksuit bottoms and leather boots. It’s a look that screams Sporty Loyal Cossack. We hug. ‘You look crackerjack.’
‘I was unsure when I left the house, but you know when you want positive affirmation on the things you’re wearing? Go to the old girls.’
‘Define old?’
‘Sixty or seventy yah. If I get a wink or a nod off an old girl on the street, I know I’m doing it right. And I got about six on the way here, so.’
Nicolette lines up the angles of her face with the outside of the building. ‘Come in,’ she says, beckoning me towards her without moving. ‘Come in with me.’
‘I’m not looking so hot.’
‘Black and white makes it all all right.’
I stand next to her and smile, lips no teeth because that’s how I feel. I look at Nicolette’s fingertips gripping the phone – her grown-out gel manicure is pleasantly prostitute-y. She takes the shot and posts it. I wonder whether to do one too, but my hesitation – as always – costs me momentum. Nicolette and I have discussed social media – being, as it is, a major obsession within both our lives. We have categorised users, ourselves included: likers, non-likers (stealth users), tactical likers, and the Truly Sound of Mind. I am more honest with Nicolette than I am with anyone else, even Kelly – which is strange for someone I have known a relatively short amount of time. I suppose it’s a different kind of honest. I just let my mouth run. In my lighter moments, it is because I adore her. In my darker, it is because I know that I have nothing to lose by her disapproval.
‘Gimme a mo,’ Nicolette says. She dabs at her phone.
My own phone pings. I look at it. Kelly.
Hey, can you chat?
Nicolette looks up from her phone. ‘Did you cut your hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean that literally, babe. Did YOU cut your hair?’
‘Actually, I did. But then I got it professionally tweaked.’
‘Are you having a breakdown?’
‘No! I don’t think so.’
‘It’s not a criticism. Maybe psycho is the way to go. I almost rugby tackled a charity hijacker to the ground earlier. Do you know what he said to me? Mate, you just dropped your smile. I wanted to end him. More than I wanted to end cancer.’
‘You should have. I hate those harassers. I hate the way they try and teach you how to be a good human. The guilt trip of it, you know? Like they’re responsible for the fabric of society.’
‘Yah. I don’t have time for it, either. I’ve not stopped since 5 a.m. I ate a sandwich on the toilet at work, to save time. Then I remembered that was how Elvis died.’
‘We’d better go in.’
‘I suppose.’
In the studio, we take our positions on our mats.
‘Be non-judgmental with your breathing,’ Natalie the yoga teacher says.
I try to not judge my breath. Hey, breath, just do your thing. Lately, I’ve been focusing a lot on stabilising the water in my inner bowl. Natalie said to think of my pelvis as a bowl full of water and to keep my tailbone tucked in and my pelvic floor engaged to keep the water steady. I knew Natalie was a good person the first time I walked into her class. She’s small and nervy, which I find reassuring in a yoga context. It lets you know she’s been through it – spiritually, I mean. She says my Warrior Two is really coming on and I could be as fierce as the goddess Durga if I put my mind to it, so whenever I’m standing anywhere I try and be mindful of my inner water. I am aware I sometimes look a bit odd at the bus stop.
The inner water would be a lot easier to manage without the memories that invade as soon as I take my eye off the present. A door opens in my mind, and in they surge: a procession of people who don’t like me; people I have wronged in some way, Banquo after bastard Banquo – that friend I kissed, that woman who shouted at me on the cycle path, the YOU HAVE NO INTEGRITY man (who in my mind looks like my old French teacher, who I had a crush on). Another spasm at the thought of a meeting with three PRs the other day where I used the word ‘groovy’. Which all takes me back to the croissant, its pathetic tally, my fundamental unlikeability—
‘Move your arms in time with your breathing, Jenny,’ says Natalie.
‘I am.’
‘You’re breathing that fast?’
At the end of the class Natalie asks us to imagine we are trees, rooted into the ground down our backs, but all I can think of is The Human Centipede, which makes me feel hurlsome. That film cannot be unseen. Once I start thinking about it, it’s like there’s literally a rod up my arse. Or a Rod up my arse, depending on who the scientist might have abducted.
‘Concentrate on your breath, Jenny,’ Natalie says. ‘There is nothing but your breath.’ Is she giving me more advice than anyone else in the class? Surely I’m not the worst in the class. Dear sweet Christ, just when your day can’t get any worse. I breathe in and out and try and listen, but it sounds like a ventilator in a hospital, like someone being kept alive, possibly against their will. It’s not a tranquil thought. I’m not sure I’ve ever been good at being tranquil though, in all honesty. I’ve never seen a hammock and thought, that looks relaxing. I just think, that’s going to tip up, with me in it. Kelly bought me a session in a sensory-deprivation pod for my birthday last year and I got out after five minutes. It was so dark in there! The woman giving me the induction told me there was a button on one side for the lights and an alarm on the other side in case I got into trouble. But once the lights were off and I was floating, I couldn’t tell whether I’d spun right round and so I didn’t know which button was the lights and which was the alarm, so I didn’t press anything out of fear. She also told me I’d know my hour session was up because five minutes before the end, a ‘small wave’ would ripple through the tank, emerging from the top of the pod, behind my head. Well, I was on tenterhooks anticipating that small wave. How small is a small wave? Would it flip me over? I got out after five minutes because the tension was so unbearable. I told Kelly it was great, and I really fucking hope she doesn’t buy me another.
After class, Nicolette and I walk together to the end of the street. We pass a skinny woman walking her Italian greyhound.
‘You know that thing about looking like your dog?’ I say to Nicolette. ‘Do you think it could work the other way around? So you get a dog you want to look like and you become as one, shape-wise? Or is it that you’re attracted to things that look like you, in a cloning sort of way?’