It is 2 a.m. and I am here, in my unhappy place, on Lexie’s social media.
Today, in Lexie’s unfathomably joyous life, Lexie Does Friendship. There she is posing with green juice and avo toast – Lexie, you are perfect but you are clichéd, my dear neighbour – alongside a beautiful mixed-race friend named Anais.
I click through to Anais’ page and there are similar snaps. Lexie left Tom behind and off she went to spend time with her friend. They didn’t need to be drunk. It didn’t need to be 1 a.m. She didn’t need to give Anais free drinks to make her hang out with her. What Lexie has is genuine friendship.
I once again click through all of her previous posts, trying to discover what it is about her that these people love, what it is that makes her able to forge the sort of friendships that I have been unable to forge since I arrived in this country. I look at the smiles between them and I think of Chantal and me, awkward in Waitrose as we clutch our meals for one. I wonder what it is about Lexie that Tom loves. I wonder if it is really my secret that is stopping me from making friends, stopping any true connections from forming. Or if, more simply, it’s just me. I look more closely at Lexie’s pictures to see if I can work it out.
Is it her eyes, her smile, or something more subtle? I zoom into a freckle, check what she orders to drink. I see her post a picture of graffiti in Dalston and wonder if I should look to be edgier. She goes to the cinema and I wonder if it’s time for me to get into films. Would Tom like that?
I look at her family pictures, at her friends. I pick over her life. She posts book covers often of novels that she loves. I vow to visit bookshops, make this a bigger part of my life.
I screen grab hundreds of her photos and open them up together to get the whole picture, and eventually I fall asleep on the sofa, oddly comforted by the many bright, happy faces and facets of Lexie watching over me.