‘Arresting and inventive’
Sally Rooney
‘I ate it up in two sittings’ Saba Sams
‘Brilliant…This collection covers themes on sex, friendship and work and dives into what it means to be human’ Stylist
‘So fresh’ Pandora Sykes
‘A major new talent’ i
‘I couldn’t get enough’ Michael Magee
and articulate’ Sunday Times
precise
‘So
‘In her debut short-story collection, Rebecca Ivory has taken all the tiny humiliations of life and made something so precise and articulate . . . A short-story collection that feels apt’ Sunday Times
‘Ivory performs many small, delicious reveals and rug-pulls in this study of modern relationships . . . A fine display of her talents’ Observer
‘A blooming literary talent . . . Ivory is the real deal’ Irish Times
‘Wincingly funny and winningly honest’ Daily Mail
‘A major new talent’ i
‘Brilliant . . . This collection covers themes on sex, friendship and work and dives into what it means to be human’ Stylist
‘Arresting and inventive’
Sally Rooney, author of Intermezzo
‘Her writing feels so fresh . . . What these stories evoke the most is a feeling of life not looking like you thought it would; of restlessness and ennui, shot through with moments of piercing revelation that made me put the book down and think, “isn’t that a thing” several times’
Pandora Sykes, author of How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right?
‘Sharp, astute and painfully funny, Rebecca Ivory has written a powerful collection of stories. I genuinely couldn’t get enough’
Michael Magee, author of Close to Home
‘I ate it up in two sittings. Beneath these stories runs a pulsing darkness, a restless humour, a palpable and astute distrust. Here are all the ways we scam each other, but most of all ourselves’
Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes
‘The stories in Free Therapy are unerring, ferociously original, coolly controlled and queasy with revelation. They live viscerally in you for days afterward’
Colin Barrett, author of Wild Houses
‘Rebecca Ivory’s Free Therapy is rich, complex and sophisticated’
Nicole Flattery, author of Nothing Special
‘Rebecca Ivory is a brutally honest and brilliant writer. Her stories are dark and unafraid, and are always told beautifully, shrewdly, stylishly. Oh, and she’s very funny. Here is a collection that teems with compassion and curiosity for the little interactions and the little falls that make us who we are’
John Patrick McHugh, author of Pure Gold
‘Reading Free Therapy is like scanning through people’s intrusive thoughts and watching them come to life – delicious, snort-worthy and highly entertaining. Rebecca Ivory’s writing isn’t just full of excellent one-liners, it’s astute, original and entirely compulsive’
Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of The Three of Us
Rebecca Ivory was born in 1993 and is a writer based in Dublin. Her short fiction has appeared in the Stinging Fly, Banshee, Tangerine and Fallow Media. In 2020, she was awarded a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. Free Therapy is her debut.
Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies
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First published in Vintage in 2025
First published in hardback by Jonathan Cape in 2024
Copyright © Rebecca Ivory 2024
Rebecca Ivory has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Dedication from The Hero of This Book © Elizabeth McCracken 2022
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It’s called, my mother might have said, an inner life: the one thing nobody can take away from you.
—Elizabeth
McCracken, The Hero of This Book
For my family
Push and Pull
At fteen, I couldn’t t into my clothes anymore. Shorts I had worn the previous summer could not be zipped up, t-shirts strained across my chest and arms. My breasts had grown larger – suddenly and painfully. I imagined myself to be too broad in the back and graceless in my movements. There was a new smell that came from between my legs when I sat down, of rust and bread. I spent much of that summer with my friend Tara, who had always been slightly larger than me. My self-disgust triggered in her a new awareness, and she was prompted to examine the spread of her own thighs and stomach, to compare the width of her hips with the circumference of her waist. We agreed that our developing femininity was excessive, that an overall reduction might help to counteract it. We experimented with a diet of popcorn and chicken and fruit and salted crackers. We twisted and craned in front of bedroom mirrors, to con rm how pale and expansive and odd our bodies appeared to other people and how best to conceal this. We positioned bra straps and waistbands
carefully to prevent our esh from bulging over. We informed one another when we sat or stood or walked in an un attering way. This mutual criticism couldn’t be taken back simply because of hurt feelings; that would have been dishonest. Our behaviour was competitive and collaborative, and the mutual appraisal was essential for any improvement. This process was casual and cruel and intimate, and I thought about it all the time.
After six weeks, I had lost three pounds and Tara had lost almost six. Mostly, it was noticeable only around her face. When Tara stopped holding her breath, her stomach still hung over the waistband of her underwear and so did mine. Our upper arms remained pimply and red and soft. Even still, her progress unnerved me, given that my own was much slower. Tara remarked on our similarities, which she found amusing. Privately, I was o ended. I had assumed I would always look better than she did. My disgust for the both of us deepened. I expressed anger towards my body in ways that embarrassed me: alone in my room, I cried in frustration while tugging and scratching violently at my esh. If I experienced hunger pains, I started to pound at my stomach with my st, as if the hunger would defer to violence. Once I calmed down, I experienced a cold and crystallised shame: as well as being disgusting, I was hateful and bizarre.
In August, Tara was due to leave Ireland for a three-week retreat to Spain with her family. Her parents were deeply religious, and the purpose of the trip was to undertake a pilgrimage all together. Before her departure she was agitated; it would be much harder to maintain the same level
of control at mealtimes, she’d have to eat whatever her family ate.
‘There will be so much walking every day, you’ll just burn o everything you eat,’ I said casually. ‘I’ll probably end up losing all my motivation while you’re away too. We can start fresh when you’re back.’ This was a lie. I planned to be even more vigilant in her absence. I hoped to convince her that she could safely give in to complacency. Tara only rolled her eyes in response as she packed her suitcase, and I could not tell if she believed me.
Once she left, I began to exercise intensely, in an attempt to create an acceptable gap between us once more. I pedalled my mother’s stationary bike every evening and ran loops around the village early in the mornings so people wouldn’t see me. I restricted what I ate even further, spitting chewed-up food into a napkin. Ten days into Tara’s trip away, I received a postcard from Cadíz, a place I had never heard of. She wrote only two lines: ‘Having a good time but missing you. See you when I get back :)’
After two weeks, I had lost another seven pounds, which was less than I’d expected. I didn’t grow downy hair or develop poor circulation, but I was cold and undeniably smaller. My body did not look good naked; I still considered it pale and blemished and misshapen. But this didn’t matter to me because I was closer to achieving the androgynous aesthetic I felt most comfortable with. In moments when I felt my commitment wavering, I imagined that Tara would return home as her previous self, after three weeks of eating greasy, indulgent food. The idea of this appealed to me more than the optics of weight loss.
At that time, there was also the matter of my mother, a retired musician who still taught students from our home. She could no longer perform professionally due to arthritis in her hands and wrists. We both paid little attention to housework and mealtimes, and she spent most of her free hours reading at the kitchen table. Because she was often in pain, she was often irritable. Our house was a cramped bungalow and from my bedroom down the hallway, I heard her at night muttering to herself, cursing the pain, the broken appliances, the money. I heard splashing liquids and slamming glasses and bitter talk that grew more confused and accusatory. Other than this, the house was quiet.
Tara arrived home the last weekend in August. We were due to start third year the following Monday. We planned to meet on Sunday afternoon at my house. We usually hung around hers, but she wanted a break from her parents and younger brothers after three weeks together. I was edgy and restless all morning for two reasons. I was conscious that my mother would be home and that she might nd our teenage chatter and excitement obnoxious and agitating. She didn’t like Tara, who was unaware of this. I was also anxious about how Tara might react to my changed body. Even my mother, who was mostly detached from anything beyond the provision of shelter and basic nourishment, watched me over the pages of her book and remarked that I should be careful: skinny people get sick more frequently than larger ones. Now that I was faced with seeing Tara again, my sudden weight loss felt like a betrayal rather than a triumph.
On Sunday morning, I paced the house, pausing to
check my re ection, wishing that I could look fuller again. At two o’clock, I heard Tara’s mother’s car pull up and I rushed to open the door. There was immediate excitement from the two of us and she wrapped her arms around my neck for a hug. My smile kept contracting and wobbling. She shouted hello to my mother who was sat quietly in the kitchen, pretending not to hear her. I carried on, leading us both towards my room, where Tara pulled herself onto my bed, sitting cross-legged. I was acutely aware of how I moved my body and could not let my hands lie still. I settled for leaning on the windowsill and folding my arms over my chest.
‘Are you happy to be home?’ I asked her, my voice high-pitched.
‘You look very thin,’ she replied quickly, ignoring the question. Her voice was cheerful in a way I thought might be sarcastic.
I knew I couldn’t return this compliment because, as I had expected, she had put back on any weight she had lost. I feared that saying otherwise might provoke explicit anger. She tilted her head to the side and cocked her jaw, considering my appearance. ‘You look good, but you’re still quite spotty,’ she said, before adjusting the pillows and lying back. ‘Your forehead is so shiny.’
Throughout the day, Tara ate more than I did. She kept requesting snacks from the kitchen. I brought her rice cakes, which she refused, asking for biscuits instead. She quickly ate ve in a row, talking with her mouth full and spraying wet crumbs onto my duvet. I had green tea. We went to the newsagent’s, where she bought coke and crisps
and chocolate, things we would have eaten together earlier that year. Rather than feeling disgusted with Tara’s indulgence, I felt guilty for not joining in. When her mother arrived to pick her up at six o’clock, I was relieved to see her go.
*
That September, we resumed a school-time friendship with two other girls, Erica and Maria. We had very little in common but had all attended the same primary school and so they seemed like natural allies when we started secondary school. Tara and I were interested in music and art. Erica considered all creative pursuits to be worthless and embarrassing. This was a belief instilled in her by her parents, who helped wealthy people manage their money. Over the summer, Erica’s acne had cleared up, and her braces had been removed. She returned to school with a boyfriend – a popular fourth-year student who lacked any sense of humour. We formed an odd little group with his friends during lunch, and although we rarely spoke to each other, we gradually decided who ought to pair o . Maria ended up with a very stupid but gentle boy. I had been assigned to a boy named Luke, who was so conventionally attractive that it made me feel apprehensive about eye contact and being alone with him. Tara showed no interest in any of these boys. In return, they quietly mocked her bad breath and constant absent-minded singing and humming. Within the rst couple weeks of school, I could already tell that Maria and Erica were losing patience with Tara. She could be both volatile and remote, erupting with goofy,
unbidden laughter only to abruptly stop and stare blankly at any boy attempting to engage her, even when they were trying to be friendly. In these moments, I felt wholly responsible for her and looked at my shoes or turned away, not wanting to witness the ways in which she alienated herself.
‘She needs to stop following us around. She’s embarrassing us,’ Erica told me in early October.
‘She’s embarrassing herself,’ Maria added, her face wilting with pity.
Instead of insisting that Tara be included and accepted, I began to maintain my own friendship with her separately. I never explained to her what Erica had said and watched with growing anxiety as she trailed along behind us, becoming more and more uncertain of her peripheral position in our foursome. I kept myself busy talking to Erica and Maria and lingering near the boys, aware of how rarely anyone acknowledged Tara. I felt guilty and wished she would just go away.
When Tara and I were alone, I hoped we might be able to pretend it wasn’t happening. Unsurprisingly, she was hurt by my disloyalty, my refusal to admit we were freezing her out. She criticised my fawning, my e orts to impress Luke and his friends. I laughed at Luke’s jokes, which were often regurgitated from Will Ferrell movies. They weren’t funny and I was morti ed that Tara should draw attention to my pandering. She scolded me for skipping lunch, telling me I looked awful, that maybe I’d lost some weight but now my hair was dull and my skin too pale. I was nervous to be alone with her but didn’t have the courage to cut her o completely. Our relationship
started to feel more and more like stumbling and skidding down a hill of thorns; I avoided impact where possible but couldn’t control our trajectory.
Throughout the winter, I continued to eat very little. I learned how to be subtle and precise when applying makeup and styling my hair. This was time-consuming, and I lost interest in reading and music and anything else outside of myself. Erica gave Luke my number and we texted each other constantly. I kept chewing and spitting out my food and exercising at ve o’clock in the morning. Rather than feeling weak or depleted, I took deep satisfaction in this erasure of my body and mind. It was not the polished exterior that I valued, so much as the secrecy of my discipline. There was a private and remote space within myself, an interior room I could visit to feel superior and resilient. At this point, I felt so alone in my life that such delusions were easy to believe.
I still spent my Friday nights with Tara to keep her happy. The tension between us could be temporarily relieved during our sleepovers at her house, where I slipped quietly into a chaotic, messy and happy sort of atmosphere. She lived on a dairy farm. Tara’s mother was an elegant woman whose re nement surprised me because her house was so untidy. I found Tara’s older brother very attractive. Tara regarded him with such reverence and admiration that I sometimes wondered if she did too. On the other hand, Tara’s stepfather, Jack, made me feel uneasy. He owned the farm and was at least ten years older than Tara’s mother. He was short and compact, with thick dark hair on his head,