The last thing he wrote was on the back of a receipt, its edges crumpled and Wrangler-dyed.

Picturing how hot and cheap Sadie looked outside the Lucky Panda, his blue-biroed words in her hand, he dips a battered ball into the polystyrene cup next to his new keyboard and licks off the sticky sweet and sour sauce before chomping on the chicken. Remembers her laughing, Why’s it all in capitals, J? Can’t you write proper? It’s like you’re shouting!, his face flushing as it had thirty years ago, making her laugh all the more as she walked into the takeaway with his order for their date.

Now, in the screen’s glow, he single-taps the keys like a child learning piano until he finds his rhythm and the words pour out of him as quickly as downing a pint or spunking in the shower. After, he munches on a prawn cracker and re-reads his comment, surprised at how the perfectly formed lowercase letters contain the rage. Like the locked bedroom door he’d pound with small fists, his mother on the other side, repeating, Let it out, son. Let it out. Don’t want you fucked-up like your father.

With the eyes of a stranger, he takes one last look at Sadie’s post—it could be the photo of any woman, it had been so long—before hearing his mother’s voice and pressing send.