Jane Actually

things and entered the bathroom.
She doesn’t want to go walkabout
, she thought.
That means she’s going to go online and kvetch about this to her peeps. Yup, I do begin to know you, Jane.
    . . .
    Jane waited for the bathroom door to close before she went back online. She contemplated the wisdom of using one of her many accounts to comment about Courtney Blake, but she had spent—or mostly spent—her ire by complaining to Mary. She suddenly realized the debt she owed Mary. It reminded her of the times when she was separated from Cassandra and did not have her sister’s moderating influence.
    Instead she opened an email to Albert:
    Dear Albert,
    Please forgive me my recent silence for I have been monstrously busy. I did not know—really know—what work meant until this job. In my day, work meant doing one task until completion but now I must run from pillar to post leaving one task uncompleted before tackling yet another.
    And so that is my excuse for not writing lately and for not arranging to set a date for our next chat. It has only now occurred to me and I hope you will agree to Sunday as usual.
    Now as to my real reason for writing you today—other than my primary reason of offering my apologies: have you read that book about Jane Austen by that Courtney Blake? He apparently thinks Jane was some daughter of Sappho and has reinterpreted everything she’s written as some manifesto.
    People like him do not understand the world was very different for us. They want to take the values of the twenty-first century and apply it to our lives. Why even your time on earth was vastly different to mine! What a world of opportunity did not exist for a woman of my time? Of course that would colour my outlook and how I would express myself. How could a young man of today even hope to make sense of it?
    That I shared a bed with my sister
    But Jane stopped writing, realizing that she was about to reveal her identity to Albert, a step she was reluctant to take. She had begun to enjoy the fiction of herself as some poor drudge at Random House and thought it gave her an empathy with Albert’s employment. She thought of some of the books she had read of successful people long married who fondly remembered their first home and longed for that simpler time. At present, she was reluctant to give up her simpler time with Albert.
    She erased what she’d written and instead asked Albert of his family and of the baseball game she had watched with Mary two nights previous. This recollection required some editing as she recalled that she had earlier told Albert that some ill-feeling existed between herself and Mary, the new girl in the office. She began to invent a rapprochement that quickly spiralled out of control.
    Why cannot I be this inventive when I am trying to write something new?
    She ended the email when she started to speak of her oft-remarked mention of baseball in
Northanger Abbey
, 1 again almost falling into the trap of betraying herself.
    In short, dear Albert, I shall endeavour to communicate more faithfully with you and I look forward to Sunday night.
    Your very good friend,
    Jane
    . . .
    Albert looked fondly on his sleeping great-great-great grandchild Julia. He was just enough of a romantic to believe he could see a resemblance to his wife Catherine and enough of a realist to know an eight-month-old might look like anyone with enough imagination. Julia was sound asleep in the arms of her father, who was sound asleep on the sofa, oblivious to the sound of the baseball game on the television. On the recliner beside him was Joe’s brother, Ricardo, also asleep.
    Albert marvelled at the complexities of his family in America. His granddaughter Maria had moved to the United States and to Florida, where Albert’s brother had moved after the Second World War. Maria had married a man from Cuba and now Albert looked at his family that included AnnaMaria his great-great granddaughter, her husband Joe, his brother Ricardo, and the sleeping baby Julia. And that was simply the family in the house, not to mention Joe’s children from another marriage and the family of his great-grandson in Muncie, Indiana.
    Conversation having grown quiet in the living room, Albert went to the kitchen where AnnaMaria was making spaghetti.
    “Everyone’s asleep,” Albert said as he entered the kitchen. His words were communicated through the portable terminal that sat in its recharging stand in the kitchen.
    “You told them too many