“Oh, dear God,” Abe clasped his hands to his face as he looked at his emails.

“What’s up?” Shoshana asked poking her head around the door.

“We have been invited,” said Abe rolling his eyes, “to another bloody Zoom cocktail party.”

“Fuck,” Shoshana said, “who is it this time?”

“My boss,” Abe responded, he ran his hand through his thinning hair, “which means we can’t cry off, can’t leave early, and definitely can’t turn up in dressing gowns.”

“Hang on a moment, sis,” Shoshana pointed at the phone clamped to her ear. Then said to Abe, “Can we talk about this later, honey?”

Abe nodded, printed the email out and walked slowly to the fridge to stick it under one of the magnets covering its facia.

Snippets of conversation drifted from the living room.

“Absolutely nothing to wear…”

Shoshana was good at displacement, Abe was not. He liked the atmosphere in work; the watercooler chats about TV, the banter, the crap coffee, even his boss’s grumpiness. It defined him. Now he was lost in a world of Facebook and eking out Netflix series so they lasted the duration.

Then there was the Goldstein account.

Continue reading →