Page 1 of One Summer

MARCH

One

Larks

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of good foresight must never be surprised by a kiss.’

‘Rubbish,’ I say, frowning, because, well, I’d quite like to be surprised by a kiss. I’ve begun to suspect that Max only kisses me when he remembers to – like an unpleasant chore that he has to tick off a to-do list.

‘You only think that because you’re loved up and have forgotten what it’s like to be out there in the dating jungle,’ she says, with an annoying ‘here speaketh the voice of experience’ wave of her hand. She’s wearing a cool ensemble of streetwear, purple lipstick and elaborate pearl necklaces and, on her, it somehow works.

‘Surely an unexpected kiss is romantic, especially if you’re single?’

‘No, it isn’t. I was having a nice time dancing and thinking about what kind of takeaway to get on the way home. Then bam.’

‘That’s romantic!’

‘It was wet lips locked to my face. If you’re not expecting a kiss, it means the chemistry, the body language, is all off. You have to long for that kiss, yearn for it with every fibre of your being, stop to lean against a wall in a dark alleyway and hope the other person will seize the moment and go in for a deep snog with the stars all twinkling above you.’

‘And the stench of urine all around you, presumably,’ I remark. ‘If, in this hypothetical situation, we’re in a dark alleyway.’

‘All you’ll smell is the musk of your lover’s body,’ Henny tells me resolutely, crossing her arms over her chest.

‘Their armpits.’

‘Their pheromones.’

This is our classic morning routine: Henny at her desk, telling me about her latest dating disaster – which seems to have involved a kiss at a tango lesson – while we both pretend to be doing work.

A glass of frogspawn appears on her desk, and I wrinkle my nose as she takes a genteel sip.

‘What is that?’ I say, pointing at the foulness in her glass.

‘It’s great for the gut, is what it is,’ she says, patting her stomach.

‘Amphibian eggs are “good for the gut”?’ I say, raising my eyebrows in extreme scepticism.

‘I don’t know, they probably are – all that protein. But these little beauties are chia seeds soaked in water. They’ve done wonders for my energy levels. Nowadays, I barely even bother with my morning snifter of cocaine.’

I don’t know if she’s joking about the cocaine, and I don’t want to know. Henny operates by different rules.

‘It looks a bit… specialist,’ I say, eyes flicking back to my emails, where another three have just pinged through.

‘Whereas your breakfast is perfectly acceptable,’ she snaps.

‘Yep,’ I say, taking a huge bite out of a yum-yum and following it with a glug of cherry Coke.

I check my phone to see if Max has replied to the message I sent him earlier, but he hasn’t. He’s left me on ‘Read’. Which is unusual for Max. He’s typically a very diligent responder and always insists on having the last message. It’s almost pathological.

Henny eyes my drink suspiciously. ‘Coke is brown water. Whoever marketed that and got it to be the biggest company in the world deserves a medal.’

‘I think your favourite illegal pick-me-upper probably had something to do with it.’

‘What?’ she says. ‘I thought that was a myth?’

‘Nope,’ I say, consulting Google for proof and holding up my can. ‘Invented in 1886. Originally contained cocaine through an extract of the coca leaf.’

‘Let me look at that,’ she says, and I hold my phone screen up to her face. This is a thing I do: proving people wrong, especially when they’re so sure of themselves, and smug about being right. I’m not proud of this trait – I suspect it’s a serious personality flaw – but I haven’t been able to train myself out of it and I don’t have the money for therapy. Even if I did have the money for therapy, I’d probably spend it on something else. Something harmful to my spiritual improvement and cholesterol.

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