Robin’s face is all of a sudden, a mask of pained fury.

‘Oh really! Great to have your critical verdict, tavern wench. At least I’ve put myself out there. What have you ever done? Whinged, expected men to help you and coasted on your boobs, that’s what.’

‘Robin. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to cancel tonight due to a sudden bout of ill health and second thoughts. Then you’re going to rewrite the show, before you perform it again, and take out everything from my diary. Do some actual writing. Do what you said, and invent an ex-girlfriend, and her diary entries. Change every last detail from anything that was ever associated with, or adjacent to, Georgina Horspool.’

Robin makes an As If smirk.

‘If you don’t, I will fuck you up. I will go on every place I can find you discussed online, and I will post about how you have betrayed me. I will give interviews about how it feels to be turned over by someone you cared about. I feel like this is just begging to be in Grazia, or The Pool.’

‘Mmmm, I mean, that would draw more attention …?’ Robin says, his eyes shifting back and forth, still looking for the win.

‘It would, but I wouldn’t believe that thing about any publicity is good publicity, if I were you. I wouldn’t test it, when it’s mistreating a woman. Check out how a few careers are going, since the man in question was outed as a creep. Other women have a way of feeling solidarity with that woman. They might even turn up to heckle. Comedy festivals might think twice, if I’m ringing up saying they’ll have blood on their hands if they let you perform it. Sooner or later, the story isn’t your life-affirming whimsical diary show, it’s the fact your ex is following it around like a curse, calling it the abusive treachery it actually is.’

Robin exhales windily, but I’m not done.

‘Thinking about those interviews, and the fact I can say we split because I caught you shagging someone else, something you’ve publicly confirmed. I mean, it could get really scummy. I wonder how long it would be before Idiot Soup decide they needed some fresher, more wholesome faces on the roster. You always said you wanted to be like Bill Hicks, being dropped from Letterman. This could be your chance to find out what being too dangerous a comic to touch is actually like.’

Robin is tapping his fingers on his desk, trying to figure a way out. I play my final card.

‘I’m also going to outline this proposition to Al. See if the man who does the sums thinks the risk versus reward makes sense,’ I add, turning the screw as tightly as possible.

‘You can wind your fucking neck in, with this calling my agent,’ he snaps, all geniality gone. ‘That is over the line, he’s a business associate, not someone to be used in your spurned woman games.’

I relish the real Robin being revealed now. Despite his begging for me to come back, I’m a spurned woman, and despite it being a sole act of retaliation, I’m the one playing games. The same old misogyny, behind modern shop frontage.

‘Oh, so different from spurned man games! Like talking shite about me to my parents, behind my back, finding out where I worked—’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re becoming slightly mental.’

And there it is: ‘that one, she’s crazy,’ the last refuge of the arsehole with any woman who calls him to account.

Robin has now judged that given he won’t ever be meeting up with me again, he can invent as he wants.

‘So what’s it to be?’ I eye him steadily. ‘Do we leave here with an understanding that you’re doing some rewriting? Or is it a declaration of all-out war? As you said, tavern wenches don’t have much to lose, compared to great artists.’

He huffs and he puffs and I can see the very moment he decides it’s not worth it.

‘Fine,’ he says. ‘I’ll rewrite it. This was only a preview anyway. You really are a small-minded person, with limited horizons.’

The degree of nastiness affirms he is ditching the show, and needs somewhere to dump his needled anger.

All he cares about is his writing, I realise.

‘You know. When we first met, I couldn’t figure how someone so bright was a waitress. Now I can see it. You’ve got the chance to be immortalised in, let’s face it, a fairly uneventful life, and you’re rather be a bitter shrew. That’s incomprehensible to me.’

‘Well. I guess you just answered your own question about whether you’ll ever understand women then,’ I say. ‘See you later.’

Seconds later, I put my head round the door, catch him scowling murderously.

‘Hey, Robin. I think this is what they call a “teachable moment”.’

I don’t believe in fate, or karma, or Noel Edmonds’ cosmic ordering. Yet the timing still seems pointed, and cruel. As if there is someone up there, trying to tell me something.

After I lurk long enough to see the surly receptionist paste a ‘show cancelled’ sign on both doors, I leave West Street, high on the feeling of having faced the dragon and won. And then, heading towards my bus stop, I see him, across the street. His pin-thin, drawn wife has dark wavy hair and a hassled air, in a hoodie and tight jeans. He’s looking bored, and they’re debating where they go next, or how long they have left on the car parking meter.

It’s the first time I’ve seen him, since sixth form. I’ve jolted at the stray tagged photo, heard rumours of him being back to see his folks for Christmas, yet never seen his face. And now, here he is in the slightly baggier flesh.

I’m hardly unbiased, but it strikes me that he hasn’t aged well. Perhaps due to his former standing, I judge him more harshly. The mop of lead singer hair is the same length around his collar, but thinned and greasy looking, the eyes are pouchy, the set of the mouth is mean. The leanness you take for granted in youth has filled out. At school he was a superstar, now he looks like any other bloke.

The time though, something is different, there’s someone with them I’ve not seen before. He turns, stoops and picks her up, throws her over his shoulder with practised ease. She’s wailing, wearing stripy woollen tights and a tiny pinafore, maybe three years old. He kisses her cheek.

Richard Hardy is a father. Richard Hardy has a daughter.

What did I just use to vanquish the hold Robin had over me? Words. My words saved me.

I put my mobile to my ear and call Devlin.

‘Would you mind if I still do the last Share Your Shame thing, now I’ve left?’

40

I let Jammy out of his hutch for a roam around while I sit at the table and get my A4 notebook out.

‘Imagine if I had my own place,’ I say to Jammy, as he makes slow but steady progress in the direction of the sink, ‘This could be us every day.’

Karen is away for the weekend, back to see her parents in Aberdeen, and the timing couldn’t be better. Not that Karen going away would ever be unwelcome. I print at the top:

My Worst Day At School

It’s the final Share Your Shame subject, and although I haven’t decided if I can bear to get up and perform it, I know what I want to say.

I write. I write some more. I try to rephrase the first thing I wrote and score it out. It’s all so facetious, so striving to amuse, so false. In the peace of the kitchen, with the hum of next door’s maggot tanks, I try to banish the thought that keeps bubbling up, every time I look at the block print subject letters.

My chest rises and falls and eventually it heaves. Fat tears roll down my face and spatter the paper, so I move it from under me.

The door behind me bangs and before I have any chance to gather myself, or conceal the fact I’ve been weeping, Karen is in the kitchen, with sticky-uppy hair, a rugby top and her usual look of flushed belligerence. She drops a Karrimor rucksack down.

A pause.

‘What’s up with you?’

I try to talk, and I can’t, having to cup my hand round my mouth while I make a strange wheezy inhalation noise, the inward drawing of air in a sob.

‘Have you had some news or something?’ Karen says. Even in my diminished state, I notice how she’s sort of angry that I might’ve had a bereavement and that it’s affecting her enjoyment of her own kitchen.

I shake my head and fight to get control of my vocal cords.

‘I’m writing about My Worst Day At School for a writing competition at the pub,’ I gasp. ‘And I know they want something funny and light and easy. But my worst day at school. It was terrible. I think it might’ve ruined my life.’

I put my hands over my eyes and sob and wipe the tears, and afterwards, when I’m back in control, Karen is still staring at me. I gulp again.

‘It’s the truth but no one ever wants the truth. I’ve never told anyone the truth. I’m sick of being the person who tries to fit in and tells people what they want to hear and acts like nothing bothers her, it’s not got me anywhere.’

‘So tell them the truth,’ Karen says, shrugging. ‘Fuck the fuckers. Worst day at school, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not funny or light or easy or whatever. Worst. They asked for worst, give them worst.’

‘Should I? Even if everyone sits there saying oh that’s grim, you’re grim, thanks for ruining my evening?’