Adults. Emma Jane Unsworth

than a chance for the lecturer to talk about his days on the broadsheets. He’s no use for magazine contacts. [Pause] What’s my relationship like with my mother these days? Desultory. Can I say that? It’s not like she was the worst in the world. She didn’t molest me or anything like that – and sometimes I think it would have been easier if she had. If I’d had something concrete to work with, you know? [Pause] How’s it going at uni? Good. Good, I think. Apart from the Communication Studies. It was definitely the right decision to move down. It’s a great uni – and the fact they organise things like this – what do they call it? Pastoral care. Some universities might be embarrassed they’d attracted a load of loonies, but not this one – and I respect that. [Pause] Do I have a relationship with my father? No, I don’t even know his name. She’d never tell me. Which gives her clairvoyance skills some credibility, because it’s like she predicted the internet. You know if I had a name I’d have Facebooked the shit out of him. People at school used to tell me he was in prison. Aren’t children delicious? Freeloaders, that’s what my mother calls them. It’s what she called me. It was fucking work, being her daughter. I put a fucking shift in. [Pause] I sound angry? Yes, I think I am angry. So that’s the thing to work on, I suppose. The anger. That’s the thing I want gone. [Pause] No, she never heard from him, or she never told me if she did. All I know is he called one night when she was pregnant. She was in bed and she answered the phone and he didn’t speak but she knew it was him by the sound of his breath. Sinister, right? In my worst nightmares my father is a perv. You know, an old Rat-Packer. Come over here, princess, and give ol’ Daddio some sugar. I can imagine her going for a creep like that. Allow me a blowsy moment: sometimes I see things – the undersides of sycamore leaves, oily puddles in tarmac – and I’m reminded of a father I never knew. A cellular memory, perhaps. An amino acid residue. I don’t even know how memory works; I suppose no one does – it’s one of the things your lot are working on. When he called that night she was so shaken that her adrenaline surged, and she said she felt me stir, inside, awoken. I often think about that moment. My first encounter with the anxiety the world had in store. I had no protection in place. I mainlined her anxiety like alcohol. But that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing she ever did was leave me to go on holiday to the Bahamas one Christmas. Worst Christmas of my life. I was sixteen. I vowed I’d never let her hurt me again, and I haven’t. She sent me a postcard. I still have it. It’s what you might call a prized possession because every now and then when I feel my resolve weakening, I reread it. I didn’t take it lying down, though. I had my revenge. [Pause] How? I staged my own suicide the day she got back. You’ve never heard someone scream so much. It was magnificent. I wrote a note and left it downstairs and then I got in the bath with a razor and some fake blood. I’d say she’s probably seeing her own therapist about it but she’s quite anti-therapy. Gin is her therapy. I hope she rereads the note. It was a really fucking good note. But then, I am a lot better educated than she is. [Pause] No, that is no thanks to her. She paid for my education and then she partied all night. What kind of self-sabotaging showmanship is that? Her problem – and she has a whole catalogue of problems, believe me – but her main one is she doesn’t have any true friends. She’s a loner. And that means she has no one to set her straight. It’s not that she lowers the tone; it’s that I don’t think she realises there is a tone …

      MY DEAREST DARLING JENNY,

      I hardly know what to tell you – other than Roger and I are having a marvellous time and it’s not as hot as I feared, which you know is a relief for the likes of you and I who suffer with the dreaded frizz. You would not believe the beaches – I have taken lots of photos so as soon as I get back I’ll get them developed so I can show you and with any luck they won’t just be of my sausage knees or half a palm tree. I hope you are having a very merry Christmas and you found the money in your card under the tree – get yourself something nice in the sales. No one seems bothered about the millennium bug here so I really think try and keep your panic under control darling (you do worry!) although poor Roger did suffer another type of bug when we first arrived but that seems to have mostly evacuated now and certainly hasn’t put him off the lumumbas. See you in the new year – and the new millennium! I hope it will bring us both many great things. I really do feel so positive about the future and just know you’re going to make me so proud.

      Take care.

      Your loving mother XXXX

       LIKE OF DUTY

      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.