My inboxes have never been fuller.
But it’s not work – I think it’s fairly clear that being a freelance writer is hardly a road paved with gold right now. And it’s not because I have any major personal news. I’ve been housebound for what feels like 5,000 years. And it’s not because I’m n the midst of some kind of social or familial scandal. Again, I’ve been housebound for what feels like 5,000 years and regardless, my capacity for causing a scandal is small to say the least.
I have however been whipped into a collective frenzy by friends baying to talk about Connell and specifically Connell’s silver necklace.
If you know, you know.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about this is probably isn’t going to be the most enriching read of your life but I’ll oblige you a tiny bit of context: Connell is a character in Sally Rooney’s bestselling novel Normal People which has been turned into a 12-part series for the BBC. He is played by Paul Mescal and everyone thinks he is, to quote the Irish, an absolute fecking ride, not least because he wears a thin silver chain around his neck which peeks out occasionally, but takes centre stage during full frontal sex scenes of which there are plenty.
“The necklace is so important,” enthused a pal over Zoom, with dewy skin and lust-dilated pupils. “I would feel at least 40 percent less attracted to him if he didn’t wear that chain.”
“God the chain is fit,” wrote someone else in a DM to me.
Another particularly enthusiastic pal left me a voice note singing “CHAIN CHAIN CHAIN, CHAIN CHAIN CHAIN”, also known as the intro to Aretha Franklin’s Chain of Fools.
Then of course, the chain got its own Instagram handle @connellschain which has over 15k followers many of whom furnish the comments sections with loads of water drop and aubergine emojis and comments like “HELP ME” and “I want him to ruin my life”. From this we can deduce that they are presumably not there to admire the craftsmanship of the jewellery.
“That chain is key and core and fundamental to the plot,” another friend wrote in a long and impassioned email which discussed what jewellery can tell us about class and why it was basically the most essential piece of casting in the entire show.
But hark and be ready to digest this bad news burger: Paul Mescal gave the chain to Daisy Edgar-Jones (who plays Marianne) after they finished filming NP and SHE HAS FUCKING LOST IT.
This will come as a body blow for anyone obsessed by the show – because it just feels like another reason to feel bereft.
Loss is one of the main emotions cited among my friends – most of whom are in their mid 30s – when we talk about NP. It’s weird that something which made us feel empty and full at the same time has been so popular but it’s kind of like being smacked by nostalgia. I imagine this is in no small part to being literally incarcerated in our homes, with a whole heap of domestic shite to navigate as well as jobs and furloughs and phonics classes and money and miniature ice cream shops – all of this is so at odds with the freedom and possibility of Connell and Marianne, on the cusp of their adult lives, green with all that promise.
For most people teenage romances were the worst and the best – everything was heightened, dramatic and hormonal: we all just wrote song lyrics from all the tracks on the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack on A4 note pads trying to eke out as much meaning as possible from Lovefool. And that was before we’d even met any boys (all-girls school, in case it wasn’t entirely obvious).
So many of us found teenage love so painful and confusing and awkward and humiliating that it seems insane that some 20 years later we feel like we want to go back there, if not literally then just for a visit to take the temperature, (perhaps make a mixtape and post it to someone you fancy or smoke cigarettes in the pub wearing Buffalo boots and too much kohl, reeking of Aqua di Gio and waiting for boys to arrive).
One pal said she cried throughout the series as it made her so sad that she’d never be a teenager again. She cried for the girl she was - and who she couldn’t be again: “The good and the bad, looking back there’s nothing like the excitement of being 17.”
Loads of women I have spoken to about Normal People have said that it makes them wish they could lose their virginities again. But why? The chain, that’s why. The chain gives them an alternative narrative to the likely horror stories of their own first times.
Although that said, plenty of people have at least considered contacting their first love off the back of watching Marianne, Connell and Connell’s chain get it on repeatedly.
A few have actually #reachedout to them. But one acquaintance who emailed her ex after 26 years to say she was thinking of him is now spiralling into a decline because he has not replied but is active on Twitter and she is now spending every waking minute looking into ways to digitally rescind the email (without much success). Another reason to want a time machine, then.
Meanwhile @connellsnecklace is now at 15.5k followers which is a growth of 500 in one hour.
One of my most obsessed-with-Connell friends just messaged me to ask if I was aware of it.
“I am aware,” I replied snippily because I am basically the unofficial Chief Awareness Officer of the entire account.
“I’ve been thinking about what I’d say to him if I actually met him,” she replied to me, having had word that he lives in London. “I haven’t worked it out yet, but I do need to sort this. Don’t want to waste the opportunity if it presents itself.”
“No, absolutely not,” I agreed. “But you do know that IRL Daisy Edgar-Jones lost the chain, don’t you?”
*Long pause*
“WTF.”