Suppose it doesn’t help that underneath our clothes, our entire bodies are covered in scales. Ha, ha, ha.

Is there anything worse than meeting up with married friends when you’re single? Meeting up with them when you’re newly broken up.

I could hear the eagerness in her voice. “I haven’t seen you for ages-we should go for a drink”. Knew she’d want to hear all the gory details, like those people who slow down when they drive past a parked ambulance.

I considered cancelling, but my usual need to please other people kicked in and I didn’t. Like an idiot I showed up for drinks at a place we’d once had a good night about 5 years earlier- her attempt to recreate the fun times I supposed.

I managed to avoid talking about ‘him’ for almost an hour, until her unfamiliarity with cocktails since having kids gave her enough bravery to come out with it. “So what went wrong?” and the even more inane “he unfriended me on facebook so assumed something terrible had happened…”

Ha. Only the end of my life as I know it but please ignore that while I apologise for the end of your faux online friendship. I know I sound bitter. It’s not that I don’t want to be around people. Some of my friends-who have been through breakups themselves have been amazing and supportive and not so hurtfully curious. So impersonally interrogating, like I’m some episode of Jeremy Kyle there for their awful entertainment.

Back to the daytime carcrash TV gut spilling. I don’t know what to say. I tell her what happened as well as I can. We still love each other, but we aren’t together. I can tell it doesn’t compute with her. She’s been with her husband since we were in school and neither of them really function as seperate human beings. They are pretty much Plato’s wet dream, two halves of one whole, lobotomised when apart.

“We were incompatible” I say, trying to sound detached, even as she comments on how horrible it will be for me to have my birthday alone, to have Christmas alone -giving shape to my wordless fears like a balloon floating between us on the table. “Incompatible in what?” she asks. And I see again the image of her and husband, never demanding anything, not discussing their problems and not caring if they never have sex any more or if they are honest with each other. I don’t bring this up to her, maybe I should. I’m too polite. I hope it’s compassion that stops me yelling at her for accepting a life that is so ordinary but I fear it’s indifference.

I know her aim for this evening. It’s to make sure I’m not going to kill myself, that I’m still functioning, A-OK. Did I mention we used to be best friends? I think she still considers us that way when in reality we no longer have anything in common. So I dance and laugh and stand on my own two feet because I know that’s the only way she’ll leave me alone. We take selfies and she uploads them to Facebook. Guess who won’t see those now you’re unfriended-ha ha.

End of the night-we leave. At least I’m drunk enough so when her husband literally picks us up outside the bar (she’s not allowed to get taxis alone) I am sweet and nice and stare at the baby in the car seat that he brought along for the ride. “Thanks guys” I say. “I had a really good time.”

I don’t say thanks for listening, because you didn’t. I don’t say all the honest things I’m doing her a disservice by not mentioning. I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.