Page 46 of Unstitch

‘Uh-oh. That’s not good.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because novelties by definition are only novel when they’re new. Then they stop being fun.’

‘I can’t imagine you ever not being fun,’ I say.

She looks at me over the top of her water glass. ‘I try.’

‘Do you?’

‘What?’

‘Try. Is it a conscious thing? Because it certainly doesn’t seem conscious. Do you purposefully try to be fun?’

‘I dunno.’ She screws up her pretty little nose. ‘It’s part of who I am, I suppose. I’m the fun one, and Gen’s the sensible one. It’s always been that way.’

That sounds a lot less to me about who she is and far more about who she’s been pigeonholed as.

The fun one.

The bright, beautiful spark who dazzles and amuses and entertains.

She’s all of those qualities, of course—they’re clearly intrinsic to her—but I hope she doesn’t ascribe her value to them. But I suspect Darcy isn’t a woman who welcomes unsolicited psychoanalysis.

‘I see,’ is all I say. ‘Is that why you dance? Because it’s fun?’

‘No,’ she says, ‘definitely not.’

‘Really? You don’t find it enjoyable?’

‘I do, of course, but not because it’s fun.’ She scans the room, seemingly trying to articulate something. ‘I suppose it’s like—I’ve never been the smart one, right? That’s always been Gen.’

There she goes again, pigeonholing herself, allowing herself to be neatly indexed by someone else’s fucked-up version of Dewey Decimal.

‘You’re smart, and you’re socially agile, and you’re emotionally intelligent,’ I say firmly. ‘I can tell. So don’t say things like that in my presence, because it won’t wash. And, by the way, it doesn’t have to be binary. Gen and you can both be smart, and you are, so if your parents didn’t make that clear then I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you,’ she says softly. ‘That’s really nice of you to say. But what I mean is, I wasn’t academic. When I was at prep school, I wasn’t studious.’

‘Being studious or academic and being smart are totally different things,’ I argue. I categorically can’t let this lie. ‘Take Richard Branson. Take me. I was a fucking nightmare at school—undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD. I didn’t get either diagnosed till I went off to Eton and my housemaster worked it out in days. Fuck knows how I got through the Common Entrance, but they let me in, and I’ll always be grateful to him.’

She’s staring at me in astonishment. ‘You’re dyslexic?’

‘Yes. But this isn’t about me. My point is, you say you weren’t studious at school. So what? Doesn’t mean you’re not intelligent.’

‘Okay, but I think what I’m trying to say is that there are different types of intelligence, right, and they’re more like intuition. So you mentioned emotional intelligence—that’s one. But physical intelligence seems to be another. Basically, my body feels smarter than my mind, if that makes sense? It’s like my brains are literally in my muscles.

‘My body understands things without my brain even processing them, and it’s instinctive and intuitive. I can hear music, even in my head, and just know how I should move to it. It’s kind of like speaking a language and having no clue how you learnt it. All I know is, the music speaks to my soul, and my soul speaks to my body, and my body speaks back. Does that sound crazy?’

I take her hand across the table and squeeze it, but I don’t let go. Because what she says moves me, for some reason.

‘No,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t sound crazy in the slightest. It not only sounds very sane, but very enviable, too, because I would say that kind of intelligence is a rare and beautiful gift to have.’ I pause. ‘And you’ve just articulated—with beautiful poignancy, I might add—one of the many reasons I find you so mesmerising. Is that a better word than refreshing?’

She rests her chin on her spare hand and smiles at me. ‘It’s much better, and I can spare a few minutes if you want to list all the other reasons.’

I throw back my head and laugh. ‘Well, obviously, your shy and self-effacing nature is the main one. No, seriously. You make me laugh, when a lot of people bore the ever-loving fuck out of me.’

‘As long as you’re laughing with me and not at me.’

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