J rings me. It sounds windy where she is, or else she is speaking from under the duvet.
I’M AT THE SEASIDE! she shouts. I have not been to the seaside for years and years. Mami used to make wholemeal cheese baps, and we ate them with peanut butter and flew a pink and blue kite, and one year C fell from a roundabout and stopped breathing.
I LOVE YOU!
I am sitting in Nero with A reading ‘Apology For Poetry’, and the man behind us is talking very loudly about his trip to India, to a blonde woman with a mop of frizzy hair. She sits right on the edge of her seat and clings onto his every word. She fills every gap with breathy laughter.
EXAMS ARE OVER AND I CAN SEE THE IRISH SEA! I think I hear seagulls behind the duvet-rustling, roaring sea. Can you IMAGINE what I’d have done if I’d missed the flight, stuck in New Delhi with no money, hahaha! The blonde woman throws back her head and laughs with her eyes shut for an inordinately long time.
THE TIDE IS OUT! I imagine J tottering across a stretch of wet sand in inappropriate footwear, crunching shells underfoot.
COME SOON, she shouts, I WILL TAKE YOU TO THE SEASIDE!
