Emma Forrest

0:05Well behaved women rarely make history. Bloody difficult women do.

0:25it's hard to know what to pick out from my conversation with Emma Forrest the director screenwriter showrunner and also novelist and memoirist who had a year-long affair with Colin Farrell which we do mention. She basically says that everywhere every turn she's taken in life has been led by lust. Welcome to Difficult Women.

0:58Emma Forrest, writer, director, enfant terrible. We're ostensibly here to talk about father figure which The Guardian has just rave reviewed and called it a capable and unusual fifth novel. But I came across you first, not as a director, you did on Together with Jamie Dornan, who our listeners will have heard of, or the writer of novels, but after reading your memoir, Your Voice in My Head, 2011, I think. I sent you a fan letter. You probably don't even remember. Do I remember? I did. I looked for it on Twitter, on DMs, but I couldn't find it. So, how to sum you up before we get into the chat, you, I mean, in the memoir, it was gripping.

1:43You wrote about your eating disorders, that you were a cutter, your shrink dies, your so-called gypsy husband who turns out to be a movie star leaves. But first, I really wanted to start. I'm going to call you a precocious ingenue as a way of not saying you were a high school dropout. I was a high school dropout and perfectly OK with that. I think I'm only just understanding this year that I have some kind of, if not neurodiversity, then certainly a learning disability that was never addressed. I asked my, because I just couldn't do school. Like I couldn't see the numbers on the board. I don't know how to drive.

2:24I don't know how to cook. I can't follow directions on a map at all. You know, when people drop a pin when you're trying to meet them, that upsets me because I don't understand. and I asked my mom and my sister do you think I had actual and then oh yeah of course you did I was like you guys could have done something about it but nobody did do anything about it because I guess that wasn't done then the way that we do now so I wasn't assessed and I knew I wasn't stupid and I knew I could I can dance without having to learn how to and I can write without learning have to although my writing's better for having written over many decades now uh but I didn't have to learn to do it the way I tried and failed to learn how to drive or tried and failed to learn how to cook uh but that's what I understand now about being a high school dropout is I didn't know how to do it but when you were 14 you were you were discovered by um you want to know how it went yeah so everything would you not agree always comes down to lust as a great impetus I thought you were going to say luck.

3:28Lust. Oh, lust is better. Lust as an impetus for moving up career levels has been really key for me. So when I was 14, I think, I was absolutely obsessed with Stephen Fry. Like, I loved him. I knew he was a gay man. I had pictures of him on my wall. I loved him to the core of my being. And my mom, who had us late, so she's now in her late 80s, she said and she's American when she was my age she had been madly in love with Harry Belafonte so she wrote and asked to interview him for her school newspaper and he said yes and she suggested I do the same with Stephen Fry and he said no but other people said he said very politely no but other people said yes and it was actually Nigella Lawson who started it all because I did interview her for the school magazine she recommended me to the Evening Standard and that was the first time I was ever published and it was before the internet so when the Evening Standard and then the Times started giving me work my dad would drive my article to the office like in his car and deliver it to them because we didn't have a fax machine amazing and Nigella went to Godolphin and Latimer famously yeah you've got lots of famous friends and Nigella famously has famous friends in her kind of her dinner party scenes right where were you at school was it a London girls day school uh i was at godolphin you were at godolphin too that's why she agreed to do the magazine i understand everything clearly godolphin creates a particular kind of english eccentric because lucy punch of motherland was in my year um kate beckinsale was at the end of school when i was starting it uh there's oh sophie ellis baxter was the year below me and we're all a bit weird and very quite fancy creative yeah so actually godolphin my niece i got two nieces there um it does it allow you to even if you're not kind of a star academic does it allow you to sort of find your groove no i had an awful time but i loved the school light had a very beautiful library and a lot of my early erotic fantasies happened in that library particularly in biographies of Rasputin first love Rasputin first erotic Stephen Fry and Rasputin yeah I mean that could take decades of unpicking the Romanov sort of probably the beginning of mental health wobbles and really convincing myself in that school library that maybe Anastasia did escape and maybe she was me um so the library was very important to me but no the school was not a good fit and I remember I didn't there was one wonderful English teacher Mr Villotini who loved my writing but there was another English teacher who didn't.

6:17And the headmistress called me in because I had upset that lady English teacher by talking back to her. And I told the headmistress, look, my work goes over her head. What can I do? No lack of confidence in the young Emma Forrest. Had you been started to be published by them? No. But clearly I had the classic artist temperament, which, can I say minor swear words or not? Yeah, yeah, it's a podcast. Which is to believe to this day that I both control the movement of the ocean and am a piece of shit. And I think I always had that. Yeah. OK, where did Lust take you next, Emma Forrest? Oh, let me think.

7:02So I'm seeing you as a sort of teenage, precocious teenager who's getting stuff in the Evening Standard, who gets picked up by, you know, who writes for the Sunday Times occasionally. Then what happens? so then I wrote my first novel which was name dropper and there that very much stemmed from a great passion for my best friend at godolphin actually nothing ever happened except projecting onto her you know the way that teenage girls do with boy bands who are very feminine but I didn't have that and I just projected all my practice lust onto her and wrote this novel for her and I remember I love endings I love figure eight endings like this I wrote this novel for her and then Vanity Fair did a story about me and they photographed me and it was Lord Snowden who was still alive photographed me and I got it in my head didn't yet have a sense of what suited me was obsessed with silent cinema and I wanted to look like Theda Bara the first silent film stuff for which doesn't really suit like a young girl can i just describe you would you mind sure so emma forrest there are there will be video clips on social is a curvaceous petite stunning curly haired vixen is that all right and i had my hair in sort of a blunt black very hard Bob.

8:31Louise Brooks type Bob. Exactly in very thick black coal and the picture was bless you Lord Snowden it was not an appealing photograph and the girl I had written the book for made a point of telling me you look so ugly in that picture. Did she know? Were you sort of in love with her? But that's how it's supposed to be. That's a schoolgirl posh. Yeah. That's what we call it isn't it? But I love that as an ending that kind of when it's that extreme when you do that much for someone and that's what you get in return it always makes me laugh to this day. then you wrote a few more I wrote uh cherries in the snow I wrote thin skin is it that's the one I don't feel I could ever go back and read because I really was kind of having undiagnosed breakdown while writing that so my editor at the time very generously was like oh this is is this your writing style and it would have been years later before I'd realized I know I yeah this is not a fun there's not a writing style that was sort of me not functioning um so that's the only book I probably couldn't read because some of it was written in the priory when I was sectioned okay I didn't know about this yes and not the nice priory the the priory with like you know the other half not the richmond priory the priory it's in um okay now that I am presumably perimenopausal I have to use word tricks to remember words everyone loves the English football captain who almost got us a world cup Gareth Southgate it's in Southgate so wait so how old are we now and why were you sectioned and by whom so I went to New York when Name Dropper was being published in America my mum's a New Yorker so I have both my mum lives here in England she's a screenwriter isn't she Sandy no no how would you describe her So she had come to it.

10:25She was an original Mad Men woman. So she was an advertising copywriter of that generation and era where she was one of the first female super high achievers. And she was transferred from New York to London. And that's how she ended up meeting my dad. So she did advertising copywriting and also some plays for today for the BBC. and she I think has less had less ambition than I do and it sort of stopped there's a very triggering thing when I look at her incredible vinyl collection the most amazing record collection you've ever seen that ends the year I'm born really upsets me it's like stops in 1977 that's when the fun stopped I'm sorry I get it I totally get it so we're in New York and name droppers being published there and what I now understand this being my fifth novel and seventh book is that the year between turning in a book and it coming out is a really dangerous time for a writer because it's a year where there's nothing more you can do you have to give it up to the universe you've done your part you're waiting for it to come out people ask you what you do and you try and explain it but you can't show it to them so you sort of feel like a fantasist anyway and now that I know that that year while you wait for the book to come out is dangerous I'm I have I mean I'm ready you know and I'm okay now but I had noticed for the first couple of novels I would always sort of lose my marbles in that space when you're waiting for the book to come out.

12:13So I tried to get help in America because I was in really, really bad shape.

12:23Many, many people have written a lot about the horrors of the American health care system. I think something like 70 % of people who are on the streets in America at this point it involves a health care not having coverage so I didn't have coverage and I had to go back to England to get help and that's when I ended up one day being just sectioned in London yeah because in America they said we can help you we can send you there but if they think that they have to admit you that's what happens and then you'll owe 30 grand for two weeks. Then you get a check. You get an invoice. Did your parents section you?

13:04I guess that. I mean, they took... I guess they're the... There's stuff of that that I can't remember. A few states. Can I ask and tell me if this... It's too intrusive. It's interesting because we all strive for this success. It came to you very fast. You know, being published in America, being photographed by Snowden, having a book out in your 20s. and that's the amount of celebrity really at a young age. I've always had a theory that it's really hard to survive success and do you think that you weren't configured to cope with success? I think that there's nature and nurture and that the best parallel for mental health stuff, if you look at Britney Spears, for example, is probably diabetes, right, where there are things that can certainly bring it on faster and make it worse if you are predisposed to that.

14:10And I imagine that in her case, she's someone with a predisposition to mental health issues, who was sexualized on a world stage by her parents at the age of 15. So you then set up perfect conditions for a breakdown um and would that not have happened to her if she had had a more um cohesive uh construction and safe space around her and supportive family and i have a very supportive family so once i was in there there was a way out of it um but again and i talk about this in your voice in my head looking back look i i didn't know when i was 12 and i would sit up awake at night all night long not wishing that I could die but wishing that I wasn't alive that I didn't know if other people were thinking that or not and that's the first wave of hormonal madness I was thinking about the reason Freaky Friday is such a amazing film concept is that they're swapping hormonal madness there's the menopausal mother and there's the teenage girl and they're swapping lunacy, you know.

15:16And so, of course, it kicked in at 12 when the first wave was coming and I've always been nervous about hitting the age I am. It's interesting to talk to you now because you did know me as a young person or know of me as a young person and now I have in my head, is there going to be a trap door or I'll fall through when the next wave of hormonal madness kicks in? But I do feel I'm better prepped. you you also managed to do to do journalistic jobs between writing novels didn't you didn't when you on the sunday times i had a column in the sunday times that i i mean look to come back to your question i think it's quite easy to go mad if you're lauded for something that you feel you have no hand in um i was as you say given these opportunities and given the column and But on the back of your own talent?

16:08I don't know. I think I was probably mouthy and definitely charismatic. Was I a good writer at 16? I don't know that I was. I was probably better than other people, but I wouldn't be able to put my hand up and say, that's great writing. It became good writing. And I know for myself that it's your voice in my head where I feel like something clicked and it broke through and that becomes great writing. I love that book I love Royals I love Busy Bean Free and I love the one I've just published but I don't think it was great writing Didn't Alexandra Pringle, your editor say this was the book that you were sort of born to write it's a terrible cliche but all the novels were building actually to memoir I think she did and I think my American agent Kim Witherspoon had given me Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Greeley which was a really key text and yeah Alexandra was I guess maybe new all along which I didn't know yeah I mean it's another cliche but too much too young I mean did you feel that the world was kind of devouring you and men wanted you and you are actually very young to be dealing with these quite big things like New York publishing the sunday times male journalists it must i can see why it all kind of less into something quite scary it's funny because um a couple of years ago i guess when harvey weinstein scandal broke the then editor of the sunday times style said wrote to me and said we would absolutely we need to approach this subject we would love to give you a cover story where you explore me too and I wrote back I was like I can't because my me too stuff is from Sunday Times and I immediately like within an hour had an email from a Sunday Times lawyer saying can you come in and have a discussion with us about whatever it was that happened there here and I called my therapist in LA no I was still in LA I called my therapist and said I've oh I've triggered something by mistake and I don't want to do it you don't have to do it I don't think it'll be helpful for you you don't have to turn up in in you know so I didn't news UK towers you've been in therapy since you were eight I read well why did you start so young um because I was under threat of expulsion from the school I was at for doing something that I actually didn't do which my parents to this day they're shocked every time I say no but you have to understand I actually didn't do it which was again circles back to lust and hormonal madness a couple of girls in class no one girl in class and I wanted to write like what we pertain to be a sexy letter from a girl to a boy signed by an older girl at the school for you know forge her signature something like you know like I want you to meet me in the library and sex me or so whatever at that young age we thought it was um so we planned it together and then I got cold feet and I didn't do it but the other girl did go through with it and the other girl's mother said it was me and everywhere it just became a big swirl and oh yeah so they said I would have to leave the school if I didn't start therapy so that's why I said no literally a couple of years ago like in my 40s I said to mum you know I didn't do that she's like oh I don't think I did realize that do you think that gave you a sense of what Theresa May calls the burning injustice well Well, no, more than that, what it gave me a sense of is the complexity of being human, because that girl's mother, and I think about this a lot.

20:13So I'm a small child. She knows that both my parents work, keep office hours, which she didn't. And this girl's mother called the house when she knew my parents would not be there and spoke to the nanny and asked to be passed to me. and what I now recognize in adulthood she was drunk she was drunk she had drunk called me in the afternoon and just rambled this thing about how so long as I took the blame she'd see to it that I was allowed to stay and just nuttiness where as an adult you go what a fascinating character for a novel the mother who drunk called a little girl when she used that I would love to I think you should because actually the letter, the sex, we're going to get on to that.

21:05We're going to get on to that into father figure. Can we, you've said you used to cut yourself, which is very common in kind of the era for girls' schools. I mean, a lot of girls at St. Paul's did the same or anorexic. And you've been in therapy. You've also had eating disorders. How are you now? I mean that's the funny thing is people get are so affected by your voice in my head it feels so immediate it feels like it's happening right now and so it's tell everyone what the my voice in your head is about so your voice in my head is almost to choose your own adventure of which is the love story that undoes the character who is me because it's a memoir so is it her psychiatrist who changes her life and saves her life and doesn't tell her or his other patients that he's dying and one day I called the office and there was just a message saying this office is closed and basically all the patients had to figure out amongst themselves what had happened and he was gone and then finding this community of other patients who genuinely were alive because of this man who had died young and wrestling with that idea that people get to die the way they want to if they can if it's within their means to choose how when we were going, how could he not tell us that's the way he wanted to do it, is painful.

22:30Did he kill himself? No, no, no, no. He had lung cancer. Okay. He had lung cancer. And I don't know if he thought he was going to beat it or because he'd actually died of pneumonia, but he had lung cancer. And the love letter throughout the book to my mother, with whom I'm very intertwined, and then the love letter to the movie star who I was into. that's a very easy google of who that is and i don't know at this point if i'm even still not meant to mention i have no idea if i'm under any legal whatever you can google and it will easily be named i can name him and i guess so yeah i mean the book came out or the affair that the year-long relationship with colin farrell ended just as he hit the big time within bruges yes so that must have been tough and he'd been filming another film called on Dean with another actress and then taken up with her yeah it's a very very painful story to to absorb and I'm not going to make you go into it everyone can google it but I can tell you again as I said before there's stuff that actually is so I always love it when like I told you the story about the girl that I adored and how the picture was taken from me and she said you look ugly the most amazing thing that happened at the end of that to me is the detail that my mother accidentally on visiting us left her hat behind and then one day I open a tabloid and see a picture of him kissing his new girlfriend and he is wearing my mother's hat that presumably her beret that presumably he just saw in his house and being a movie star was like, I guess that's mine.

24:17Paging Dr. Freud, though, your mother's hat. But I loved that. Like, that sort of released me in a way. That's the gift I have to go, that's fucking funny. You know, has saved me many times. And I've seen pictures of you with Colin Farrell. And look, this is not about, let's do the Bechtel test on this. You know, we don't care about Colin Farrell anymore. It's all about you. but you said yeah in one interview vogue whatever it was that you know people went nuts when colin farrell went out with somebody who wasn't like you're slim and beautiful but who wasn't a sort of five stone model yeah which is which at the time i felt really felt you know palpably partly because I was engaged in the incredible stupidity of knowing where to as a former cutter which I wasn't still at that point I knew where to go to find things saying that I was ugly or that I was fat or that I was this fed something in you yeah um and in fairness to me that was also something Colin engaged in at that time for himself like he knew where to go to find abusive stuff about him so that's not a great sign of something that's going to go the distance when you're sitting next to each other on laptops looking up abusive stuff about each other didn't he make you feel beautiful yeah he did he was awesome he was an absolutely awesome loving boyfriend who to this day is by far the smartest person I ever dated um well I'm a huge fan yeah he wanted to have a baby with you but then the the relationship ended very suddenly um in a kind of slightly brutal way and you you married and had a your daughter yeah ben mendelson who's actually a well-known and brilliant actor i mean well there's a there's a connection there that i've never i don't think i've ever spoken about which is so your voice in my head had come out i hadn't named who it was in the book Ben and I were dating something I was really interested in about Ben is that he had no interest in gossip or unpicking things so he'd never asked who the person in the book was and one day I was like do you not want to know and he was like sort of almost idly he was like alright tell me and I told him he went oh honey he did the same thing to me and I was like what?

26:47and he said yeah yeah yeah I'm in what's the Terrence Mallett movie that Colin's in Other Voices, Other Rooms? No, you're thinking of Terence Davies. I am thinking of Terence Davies. Malick, it's about Pocahontas. It's the real story of Pocahontas. Okay, well, let's leave it. And Christy Bale. Anyway, Ben was in that not as big of a role. And he said, you know, by the end, Colin really made him feel that they were tight forever, intertwined. And then after the film ended, he said, I was really wounded because that was not what it was. It's the lover boy technique, isn't it? So it's like, how do you not marry that guy?

27:27You know, he said, and God bless him, he said, and you've got great taste in men. I think you've got great taste. It was, what, four years relationship-ish? With Ben? Yeah. Six. I don't know. I guess we met. We got engaged after six months. We got married six months after that. We got pregnant on honeymoon. It was really fast. We didn't know each other. Okay. OK, I don't want to talk about the man in your life particularly. How did you find motherhood having had kind of a quite tumultuous emotional and mental health lives up to this point? Bring me back to that thought if I lose track. But I just want to say, because you're being so generous about this, that actually I'm one of the few people where I'm not affronted or insulted at all to talk about men because they always lead me to the next career high point.

28:20Lust takes you there. It takes me there. So I wouldn't have your voice in my head without having had the heartbreak with Colin. And I wouldn't have written Busy Being Free, which is the next memoir, the sequel to your voice in my head, if I hadn't been married and had a baby. So I'm fine acknowledging the men and, you know, thank the universe for them. Well, everything is copy. Goodness. Yeah. The great Nora Ephron. So the question again about motherhood was. How was motherhood? because it's a very destabilizing exhausting time where you go through a lot of you know metamorphoses you have to become a different person who's in charge of one other person and it's kind of so first of all the most immediate answer is it was the flag that my the man and I I'd married and I didn't know each other because I was like oh my god we've got to find a nanny he's like we're not gonna have a nanny I was like what he's like no you're just gonna write when the baby's asleep I was like no no that's when I sleep like we never had that conversation so you don't know each other um so what I did find with motherhood and I'm certain it can go either way is that I as having been a great procrastinator probably undiagnosed ADHD I never procrastinated again after having a kid because I was so unbelievably grateful for any moment that I could write that I would write and I can write anywhere I can write in a parked car I can write you know thank god for the apple incredibly lightweight air mac whatever it's called that barely weighs anything always have it in my bag can write on the underground can write on the i can do that and i could do you find you write better when you're like you know you're not sitting at your desk with your special pen and the view and the cup of coffee no i find that my writing process happens in motion so my story solving happens when I'm walking or on the I especially love top decks of buses or on the underground and it also happens you and I mentioned this before we started talking here sleeplessness so I always have a notepad and a pen by my bed because often when I've had a really bad night's sleep something comes in at 5 a.m where I'm like, oh, this is it, this is it, this is it.

30:35And it's very clear. And then sitting at a laptop is, for me, always just getting everything down that I've already figured out in motion. I think it's known that motion helps creativity. And, you know, if you're stuck in a book, go for a long swim, go for a walk. Well, let's talk about your new book, Father Figure, which has already been published to rave reviews. It's your new book. Funny, rich, complex, multidimensional. I tore through it. and it's been acclaimed by many famous people, and of course it's been really well-reviewed in The Guardian. The cover shows a girl who looks a bit like you.

31:14That was an accident. I mean, I was thrilled when I saw what they'd chosen. It does. And is that a nod to this is going to be more memoir from Emma Forrest? No, no. You know what it is, is that in some of my fiction or screenplays, it doesn't matter if the family is Jewish or not. And in Father Figure, it is actually a plot point. So when they first sent me a picture, it's like this girl doesn't look Jewish. And then they had to go... I was like, I'm sending you a picture of young Rachel Weisz. I'm sending you a picture of young... Who is Amy Winehouse. Who is Amy Winehouse, too. Friendly... Yeah, I haven't seen her in a long time.

31:48But... So that was the vibe. Because it's a mother and daughter relationship. Jewish. Yeah. There's Bar and Gail, mother-daughter. And then there's a whole other family that is a sort of amalgam of like also Jewish who sort of Mohammed Al-Fayed and Murdoch. And it's kind of crazy. And it becomes very sort of sexy, steamy, transgressive. Yes. I was trying to do the mirror worlds of the power dynamics within a all girls high school, secondary school, mirroring the attempt by this figure, this billionaire figure who came from the East End to be accepted by the British establishment while she's trying to become accepted within the miniature British establishment of her school.

32:39Which is more hierarchical. Yes, that's exactly it. And which of them, in their attempts to become accepted, becomes more dangerous? Which of them is ultimately going to be the last one standing? I've only got one quibble with it. You do? No, it's so tiny. Don't worry. Oh, gosh. You said at one point that the pinnacle of British power and society was the House of Lords, and it's not. Tell me. It's really not, because there are 800 people in the House of Lords, and most of them are has-beens and losers. but she wouldn't know that oh I see that's her voice not your voice but I'm covering my tracks because I wouldn't have known it either and in that sense I'm not establishment I don't know anyone who's not in the House of Lords it's like so common now you know me Emma listen we've got to the point where I ask you what's been your most difficult time I wonder if something really juicy please let me think are my most difficult time well actually the so the process of writing father figure usually when I'm writing a book I'm also writing a screenplay and most people even not within the industry could probably imagine that writing a screenplay is much more profitable than writing a book so in order to write a book for basically no money I'll usually write a script and there was a writer strike when I was writing this so I couldn't write a script I just wrote a book and that was a year where I really was broke and one of the things that that did if this is the book with the most clarity which I think it is the most well-defined the book where hopefully there isn't a spare word I really didn't get to do any of the things that I had had the luxury of doing before like as simple as having a trainer like I loved having a trainer three times a week and having that taken obviously you know people that's gonna sound like a first world problem it's totally a first world that's fine problem um but it was a key mental health exactly if this is what keeps you sane it was a mental health thing for me so whatever I have been used to processing through and also remember I said I can't cook so also I would buy there was a thing I can't remember the name of the company but they would do fridge fills where they would send you five good meals that you keep in your fridge for the week and I would know that I was at least eating something healthy so my eating was pretty bad I wasn't working out and I think I was processing a level of literal physical discomfort through the book that's been quite effective and just to get ahead of it of course you could work out on with a youtube video at home if you don't have learning difficulties like i can't follow the instructional video and you hate jogging i bet i could try boobs can i jog with boobs i i don't like it okay i'm just going to tell you something the sebastian folks told me about that interregnum between publication and that that nine months or a year between submitting and publication he said and I was like are you serious he said that's when you have to start another book yeah and that's as a procrastinator or somebody who thinks I want to reward myself I want to like fill the tank it's really hard yeah to do that because you've drained your battery so much by in the act of yeah composition of this novel yeah which I think novel writing is literally the hardest work there is I know that's another first world thing Yeah.

36:31But are you, I mean, you would have finished this a while ago now. Yes, a year ago. And this has been fine this time. I'm in good. You're in good health. And you've got a daughter to look after and you're a single parent. I've got a daughter. And also, actually, I'm on a much lower dose of medicine. Over the years, the medication's been, it's the same medicine I've always been on, but it's lowered and lowered and lowered. And so it's a very, very almost teeny dose at this point. and I feel better for it. The other thing I think, when I say I removed everything, like I also, this book was everything and I didn't date, like so many people, I don't, this sounds like bragging, so many people from my past asked me out, were like, please, can I see you?

37:19La la la. I was like, I can't, my brain can't do both. It has to be this book. This feels like not a last chance, But, you know, it's a fifth novel. It has to make an impact. Or maybe there's not a maybe it doesn't get published the next time. So I also very decisively would not engage with dating at all. And maybe I'm ready to come out of that. But certainly it was to the book's benefit. It certainly is. And it's called Father Figure. And I'm absolutely loving it. Emma Forrest, thank you very much for being this week's Difficult Woman. Oh, thank you. I hope I was difficult enough.

38:04Thank you so much for listening to another episode of my Difficult Women podcast. Just subscribe wherever you get your podcast to make sure the... Sorry. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of my Difficult Women podcast. Just subscribe wherever you get your podcast to make sure the latest episode is ready to go every Friday afternoon. And next Friday, get ready for my chat with Sophia Money Coots, whose new book is called Year of the Dog, and it's all about being single but finding happiness with her rescue puppy, I think. Anyway, I can't wait. Bye!