LITMIR.BIZ

      Waking up the next morning, I knew something bad had happened. I could sense it. I opened my eyes and felt a few moments of bewilderment as my brain groped for information. Why this lurking sense of guilt?

      I reached out my hand for my bedside table. And at least my phone was in its usual… Oh. No, it wasn’t. Fuck. Where was my phone? Why wasn’t it charging on my bedside table? Astonishing, the panic this can induce in a fully-grown woman. No phone! I sat bolt upright in my bed and saw my phone lying on my bed beside my pillow. And then I remembered what I’d done. I remembered why there was something niggling at me. A little voice in my head that was whispering ‘Shame.’ A sinking feeling. Already half-knowing what I’d see, I opened WhatsApp. Yep, well done, Lil. I’d sent Max a message last night at… 2.03 a.m. Brilliant.

      I read it back, feeling sick.

      The message started ‘Just to say,’ which was a bad beginning because it already sounded hectoring. People start sentences with ‘Just to say’ when they’re annoyed about something but are trying to sound laid back about it.

      ‘Just to say, I think you’re a dick.’

      ‘Just to say, I never liked your mother in the first place.’

      ‘Just to say, I hate you and I never want to see you again.’

      My intention at 2.03 a.m. was clearly to sound calm. And yet, the underlying vibe was fury. Just to say, last Saturday was my first date in six months, I’d written, which made me groan out loud in bed because it managed to sound cross and tragic at the same time. Quite a skill, that.

      I read on, my stomach sinking further at each word. Just to say, last Saturday was my first date in six months. Which was kind of a big deal for me. And I know you’re busy climbing mountains or whatever but I think it’s polite to reply to messages from people you’ve shagged. X

      FUCK’S SAKE, LIL, TELL IT TO A THERAPIST. TELL IT TO JESS. TELL IT TO GRACE. TELL IT TO THE MAN WHO SERVES YOU COFFEE IN THE PORTUGUESE CAFE. JUST DON’T TELL IT TO MAX.

      The single ‘X’ was a hilariously mental touch too. The subtext, basically, was ‘I’m furious and want to rant at you, but I’m also going to try and sound normal by rounding off this message as if we’re mates.’

      There was no reply, obviously. And he’d read it at… 7.22 this morning. I rolled over on to my front and screamed into my pillow. That was it. I’d disgraced myself. I’d become one of those people you worry about becoming. We knew it was in all of us, this propensity to be a psycho, but the trick was to try and stop it slipping out. To maintain the façade of sanity until you’d been with someone for, what, six months? A year? Only then could you start absolutely losing it over things – their inability to pick up socks, their stubble shavings scattered across the basin like iron filings, when they liked a random girl’s photo on Instagram.

      What you absolutely shouldn’t do is hint at any sort of lunacy after one date. Not that there would be another date with Max. I knew that for sure now. I wouldn’t blame him if he stayed safely up that unpronounceable mountain. And somehow, this pitiful scenario felt worse because Max was famous. As if he’d be sitting round the campfire or wherever they sat on the mountains, joking about it with his climbing pals. He probably had this all the time, groupies sending him desperate messages.

      I roared into my pillow again. How had this happened? We’d been at the gallery for a couple of hours, I remembered that. Then we went to a pub round the corner. Then? I supposed I’d had one too many glasses of wine. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I was livid with myself. And I felt a hot sense of shame sweep through me. I was literally never having sex again.

Chapter Three

      IT WAS THREE WEEKS later, on the train home to Norfolk, that I developed an inkling. Or maybe the word ‘inkling’ is too strong. It suggests that I knew what was coming, which I didn’t, despite what certain people claimed later. But it was on the train that the possibility presented itself in my head and, milliseconds later, my body responded by convulsing with fear. Shit. What if? Nah, couldn’t be. And yet? What if?

      It was all thanks to Jess, who’d decided to come home with me for the weekend because she said she wanted to escape London for the ‘wilds’ of the country. This seemed ambitious considering we were off to stay in my parents’ semi in Castleton, but Jess had overly romantic ideas about life. She was late to Liverpool Street that Saturday morning so I picked up our tickets and dithered for ten minutes in Caffè Nero wondering whether I could stomach a Danish. I felt sick, which was weird, because I hadn’t been out drinking last night. I stood in front of the glass cabinet frowning to myself. What did I have for supper? I remembered. My ‘special’ pesto pasta – pasta, couple of spoonfuls of pesto and a few peas – the ‘special’ element of this gourmet dinner – lobbed in from a bag in the freezer so I could tell myself I was getting one of my five a day. But it didn’t contain anything sinister, so why did I feel vommy, as if saliva was pooling at the back of my throat?

      ‘Can I have an Americano please? Medium?’ I said to the woman behind the till. She wordlessly nodded at the card machine in front of me.

      I reached down for the purse in my bag and stood up again, but had to put a hand on the counter to steady myself. I felt like I’d been out until 3 a.m. doing parkour in the streets, yet all I’d done was eat my pasta on the sofa with Grace and Riley while we watched a weird Netflix documentary they’d chosen about dolphins. Did you know that dolphins masturbate? I didn’t. Male dolphins wrap wriggling eels around their penises apparently and that does it for them. Isn’t that odd? It made me think quite differently about ever wanting to swim with dolphins. Each to their own but I prefer a vibrator. Although even that had felt like too much work last night, so after the documentary

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