We holidayed at the edge of the marsh, high in the mountains. It was humid, so warm and close. At night I could see London’s golden chains, dangling along the curve of the valley, necklacing my blue velveteen fields of sleeping houses. Your blond hair was so long it tangled in the tall roadside flowers. At some point, you crept into my conversation, right in broad daylight, and since I have only wanted to talk of you, if only to myself. I am bored and distracted otherwise. Together I thought we saw exquisite winged beasts, translucent and prismatic, and a caramel bull with long grey horns. I think he had found his way here by way of a novel I had been reading. It was so nice to be close to you and alone. I was happy and calm. I feel calm now still, now I have seen you.

Just before or just but not quite. I caught her tearline turning silver.

Due to cut backs facing the NHS, last night I operated upon myself. Upon my bed I found a green paper gown and a television remote control. You had sanctioned the operation by petition, signed the line printed now upon my forearm so that I might cut along it. I took off my clothes behind a screen and I dressed myself again in the green dress. I placed my folded jeans on the desk. The nurse I had hired lifted my hair from my shoulders and tied the ties at my neck. She left me alone for a little while and I sat on the bed with my legs stretched out in front of me.

When the nurse returned she held a tray from the kitchen. She said, are you comfortable? Are you anxious? This is a routine procedure. It’s very simple. She handed me the tray, switched on the television and left the room. On the tray there was a full syringe, a small scalpel, scissors and a tube of glue. I put it on the bed beside me. Then I followed the instructions given to me by the surgeon on the television. His instructions were precise. He spoke slowly and smiled encouragingly before parts of the procedure I might find difficult. With my right hand, I anesthetized my left. It went numb and then blue to the elbow. My hand flopped at the wrist. Still with my right hand, I cut a large square into the skin just under my knuckles. I peeled this square of skin off easily and with a great deal of curiosity. There, caught on a bone, I found a fishing hook.

I had been for the X Ray a week or so before. They had shown me that the line went up my arm, twice around the brain, back through both lungs and then they’d lost it. It could be anywhere, they said. Someone’s hanging onto that line somewhere, they said. How did this happen? I said. Do you swim, they said? Every now and again, I said. Well, look no further, they said.

I cut that line and pulled out the hook. I tried to undo the tube of glue. I got tired then. I curled onto my side and I stretched out my hand over the floor so as not to get blood on the sheets. I waited for someone to tell me I could go. I held the hook in my hand and I slept.

It was dark when I awoke. I found my hand had been bandaged but there was blood seeping from beneath my pillow. I turned my pillow over to find a handful of newly knocked out teeth and three old clean ones, the ones they said that you’d lost while dreaming of something like me and something like another hundreds of years ago.

Once you and Roussel had tried to pave the road to hell with the teeth of the well intentioned. But your conversation with him was at cross-purposes, and rather than a path, you created an intricate labyrinth. Roussel had wanted to extract teeth with a machine but you, you had waited for all your teeth to fall out just from loneliness and you watched strangers longingly if they slept in front of you on trains or buses.

I dressed, still holding the hook in my hand, and my friends were waiting for me when I left.

Towards morning, our boys on the stairs and the beautiful Carolina between them.

We write one another lists. I am on the train early. Long tears roll down the window. My long sleepless morning is dark and blue.

As I run alone for a night bus, he (can't be more than sixteen) calls out, 'Lady, walk, don’t run. I’ll carry you home'.

At the laundrette she asks ‘Who made the angels? They move around rescuing people’ again and again. Her arms are full of children’s clothes.

My governing desires: run, hide.

I sang with your voice from behind the bar. I watched as you held her and I sang. Your voice was clear. We sat on the pavement outside in the dark. You smoked. I sang. It was highly suspect.

I've dreamt of you often. Forgiveness and my lies, the quality of my forgiveness and your long longing lies. You and I, I came to my bed full of your memory and your declarations. I left London loved and returned unloved and in my absence, you and her. Have you heard the delicious news, says Jack, they love one another.

And what is there to forgive. You said you loved me and now you love another. And I want very little to do with you and you want very much to do with me.

Dreamt last night of the end of the world, which was a mudslide and while one or two of our friends were knocked over by the police cars and the ambulances, whilst they died on the pavements, She and I, we stopped the waters at our feet. She had wanted to drown us. And so we had taken deep breaths and we had thrown ourselves into the sea only to find that we could swim. Later, whilst in the attic, Alexandra said her goodbyes and her I loves yous and drank poison. I made her spit it out into my hand, like treacle and tar, and her legs were bruised and how she was cross with me. How she would prefer to cough and choke and drown inside. I would, she said, bury us up to our necks in stones, wouldn’t I, that's the kind of girl I am. Drawn out. We walked the streets and found our loved ones running from their empty houses and we caught them in our arms as they ran past.

I'm in the Paris of the East drinking coffee with the Dutch, who sing on the streets in English.


Anna has fallen in love. I watched her watching him, undressed on his back in the grass.

Goodbye, Anna is drunk and wounded. She climbed into her bunk. She lost her grip and she fell. There's blood on her dress, in her bed, on the floor, in her shoe.


We listed Joe's faults to him over dinner. He walked out of the restaurant and onto the streets of Bucharest.


Went to Budapest but my heart wasn't in it.


(Dear______, how are you? Are you having a nice time? I hope you are very well. Quite frankly I've missed your company. I will return to London with a bottle of Perfect Vodka in my handbag and my drawings of you and Anna in my diary.
Love, Olivia)


Anna's drunk and war wounded. Tell me stories. Anna climbed a tall metal fence, with her fingernails. She lost her grip and fell. There's blood on her hands and it's rolling down her wrists.


I confused emergency exit, Ieşire de urgențâ, with urgent desire.

Anna and I, we danced and sang in the kitchen. The two of them and Anna and I. Tell me what was said. Over a game of cards, Joe is drunk and wooing, said do you two have girlfriends? Then at gin rummy I won three years of another’s life, fair and square. And though you are 24, I would like the years 16 to 19 for they are formative.

I thought him beautiful and angular.

I told him, you are angular. You are triangular. On the balcony in Braşov, Anna counted scalene triangles over breakfast. She counted 76, under the vines, on a wooden table, head on hands. He is beautiful. All long arms and long legs. He kissed me in front of Anna in the garden. He kissed me under the grape vines and in the kitchen and on the porch.

On the grass next to me, he bites into my ice cream, in the shade. At the table, Anna and I drank a can of beer between us.

I leant on my hands, head on my hands. Anna. Holding her, we walk around arm in arm. I love her. I am on the bench with my back to the sun.

All wrapped up, my legs under the bench, under the vines, his hands on my back and his mouth in my hair. A demand for storytelling, denied, hands on my back. I’m writing in the garden.

Goodbye, I sat on the bench with my back to the sun and with my pen between my teeth, Jeanette Winterson between my thighs. Anna is on the floor, next to me.

It's raining in Transylvania. There are clouds in the mountains and over our heads. Joe would like to climb amongst the bears and the wolves. I have tamed the bears and I have tamed the wolves. We watched the rain from my bed. When Anna awoke and arose, with sleep patterning her skin, I found an Anna in her bed, legs and arms of a knotted, twisted sheet. I wrote a list of Joe’s fears. I am cataloguing his worries.

1. At the top of the stairs, he stands before me. We look at one another.
I kiss him on the cheek and he kisses me. And how sorry we are we say. I was drunk so was I but I am I am sorry do you understand I am sorry, we say.

2. He's downstairs and he's been in a fight.

He's what?

He's downstairs. He's back. But before his flight yesterday he got into a fight so now he has a wonderful black eye.

And he's downstairs?

I think he'd be very happy if you just went and said hello.

He won't want to see me. Jesus. What's he doing back?

Go downstairs. He'll be pleased to see you.

At the bar, my make up fixed and in my blue dress. He is with a friend. He is drunk, black eyed, what beautiful bruises. He is older, still my elder. He sees me. He says, Olivia, and he moves his friend aside. He kisses the skin next to my lip, my lip just.

And how are you? I am well and I am happy to see you. How are you? How was it? I hear you wrote the book. 

Of course I wrote the book. 

Later on the street, he says, rolling a fag, I don't have a phone. I'm going to give you Benny's number and then you will call him and in doing so you will call me.

You are younger and I, I am the age I've always been. 

I saw you at the door; you wished the others goodbye. I walked to you for a kiss on the cheek and you caught hold of my hips.  I raised my arms to your neck. I leant back from you. So, Olivia, you said, promise me you'll find me, come to see me, when you’re drunk and tired, and I, full of surprise, tried to kiss you on the mouth. Your mouth was sea salty and bitter. You pulled me down to your bed and I found your body was my own and I said, you were beautiful in your difference! I kissed your sour mouth nonetheless and I traced with my fingers the length of your stolen ribs.

 

I am nauseous on the metro. I have a sore throat, wet hair and a stairway to heaven the length of my patterned tights. I have pressing arrangements. There are poets and intellectuals to round up, he said. Come on, get to it.



Him over there, walking in swinging circles, he declared a state of play. He is in the other room, plotting, I imagine, seven warlike uses of childlike material.



And if I think of his face, it is still only of the U of his straight nose, his blonde eyelashes.

His face: the U of his straight nose, blonde eyelashes. And what handsome wrists, his drunk fingers on my thighs, plucking at my tights. What wonderful things tights are, he says.

On the domestic front, we lived through a fascist insurrection led by the royals and the fine featured aristocracy. My friends and I were sent away and upon our return we heard the announcement of a change of regime

A slow march home, I the Eskimo, in my beautiful red coat, to my you less house over bridges of come on, come back to me, when you are at work and I am at play. I am happy and quiet when with you and I am not when without you.

That wasn't the first map Daniel drew for me. The first, drawn lying in the sunshine, plotted my being unreasonable against his being very reasonable, after a list I'd written, of all that I was for (Libraries, Divorce, Clavicles, Fine Women) and all I was against (the Immortal Soul, Private Education, Skin Cancer).

Over supper in the street, Daniel drew me a map of Europe, a map of how to get to him, in an emergency, a train through Bulgaria (I would quite like to go to Sofia, I've never been) and a train through Greece, to Daniel's house.

We put on our Wellingtons (Anna put on her flip flops) and we tried on our backpacks. We put up our umbrellas and we laced and knotted our lifejackets, adjusted our snorkels and fastened the safety harness. We put on our make up and tied back our hair. Laden, we trampled through the house. Joe wore Army surplus. Anna, a knitted pink t-shirt, black thermal leggings, fag in mouth, in fingers, sunglasses. We tramped around the houses and through the car park. Finally, we climbed a hill. It was humid and cloudy. We walked to the fields. We laid out our spread in the sun and gorged ourselves. What a picnic. We built a fort. There was a plague. There was a storm. We gathered under a blue tarpaulin and giggled and we were safe. We drank Earl Grey tea. It was so blue under our tarpaulin. When the rain stopped, out our heads stuck and the sky was yellow and the grass was yellow and the sky was grey and the grass pink and the clouds pink and the grass blue. I chased a butterfly. Anna wandered around, smoking. We walked home.

My little brother and the big blue eyes, my loved one, you are shameless, said to me on the stairs, only half dressed, I have no intention of ever really working. We laughed and today I denounced you at dinner. I said, he claims he will get by with his big blue eyes and we laughed and we laughed.

Riding home, this evening, in my summer new dress. You are at my kitchen table. I've made you a quick supper. I say, So sorry it's so basic. I top up your glass and I top up mine. We're by the window. I face my bed, you face the kitchen. I make coffee and I kiss the top of your head.

Of dreaming I walk into you, bump into you, sit down opposite you on a crowded train: an oh! It’s you. How I have longed to see you, how I have found you again. Darling, are you happy? Will you take my number, look, if you’re bored or lonely or just fancy a drink? Really darling, I’d hate not to see you again.

Livvy, I must say, Livvy, I gotta say, you look, what a dress, Livvy, you look lovely, I gotta say, Livvy, in this dress.



He is wolfish, what hunger. You and I. Gnashing our teeth.



And a vigil, as Olivia by Olivia for JULIE, and I for my her, who I used to dream of so often, and oh! to write you poems. Childishly, I long to carve your name into my desk. And I held him. Our darling panic, breathe in, breathe out, breathless, mouth to mouth, an examination of the history, our story, of her. A vigil, and I'm awake and his, God forbid, after protest, if he wanted and hunger got me into this mess and my beautiful JULIE and the poets will get me out.


I'm in my bed of outstayed welcome, of all arms and legs, and you're in and out of love, and you're just reading your lines.



I daren't think of you falling in love with me daren't I I want to you to I want you I mustn't think of you and your great tasting meals you're not him you're not the future you don't love me and I'm a fine figure of a woman.

Richard was tried and executed for serial lateness. We spent his last hours with our arms wrapped around him. We coloured his skin with crayolas, drew around his mouth in felt tip. We lay on the grass and appealed to the courts. We went unheard. We knocked him up and out, crammed paracetamol and aspirin between his lips and we held on to his fingers, wrists. He was guillotined. I mourned him.

I was met in Paris by a giantess.

Ana measures her days in Dieudonné, the time without him, the time waiting for him. She said, you're in love with him! You're not even listening to me, are you? I measure my days in food. My diary is full of lunch and breakfast and coffee. Sarah measures herself and her childhood in current affairs and newspaper headlines.



She said, when war broke out in Yugoslavia, I fell in love for the first time, over roast pork and ratatouille and new potatoes and red, red wine. I said, you measure your life in current affairs and newspaper headlines. She said, I grew up without a television. Whilst I listened to her, I ate strawberries and cream. I thought of Ana and I thought of Dieudonné.

I hear her. She says, laughing at me, Olivia is so easily embarrassed.


She, turns to another, to me, says, We were talking of you, Olivia, and the strange family tree in my text book, of mine and my brother’s goodbyes, our yellow love letters, stuck between its pages.



And blushing and kissed.



She would bite her bottom lip (Her top lip, a perfect cupid's bow, says Anna, mimicking me, drunk and talkative, a favourite topic of conversation).



Of old, old love, for her, it was my own and it was not encouraged.

He switched off the television with his toes, from the wicker chair. I patterned my diary entries with the titles of the books I love, La Belle Creole, and the headings of my days, San Francisco, Dear San Francisco.



They slept on the bed next to me for so long. After we cleaned up our mess. We swept the floors and we washed out our mouths. Han's sleepy, curled up in a pile of clothes. I wrote over my words. I traced the letters with my fingers. We didn’t eat. We forgot to eat. We said, we are not hungry. We spoilt our appetite.



We walked through the woods. We said, we will not carve our names into trees and there were forget-me-nots but we did not pick them. We drove back to Katie's through the city and we were tired.

Onto the floor.

i) He writes, I have a hangover and I can't spell under the title, Poetry, Indecency and Humour, in his notebook. We're bored, a class on comedy. I'm falling in love, in the lecture theatre. He wears an earring and a sovereign ring. His face is heart shaped. He writes 1. a wine glass and he then draws one.




ii) I held her. I thought about books and libraries, verbs and prepositions and grammar and text books and the French literature on my shelves and lines and lines of shelves and all the books, half asleep and wound round her, my mind in a bookcase.



We said, It's going to be OK, isn't it. We'll be OK. I walk back to my room, in high heels, her pyjamas and her coat over my bare shoulders, carrying my dress and my tights and my broken blue bag.



I open the door to A, pyjamas and make up and tears. She's just standing in my doorway. Come in, darling, what's wrong?




iii) You are a prime number and you are part of the pattern. For a brother, or for an older man. You washed your hair for him. You straightened your hair for him. I read about schizophrenia last night. She said, I wanted to say I love you as you left. I said, yes, I love you. She said, and whatever, everything, whatever it was before. I, you, I.



I'd watched you draw hearts on your notes like a teenager.



And when we talk, now, both of us are on our knees. My beautiful girl, in my dress and now in my shoes.





iv) He drove me back. In the car we listened to the hits of summer. When we got on to the motorway, we talked of his ex girlfriend. We ate chocolate digestives and honey from the pot, from my mother, for next term, provisions, useful, for the cupboard. I fed him, dipped the biscuits in the jar. Chocolate and honey on my fingers, car seat, mouth.





v) I'll write you a book of page references, a treasure hunt.





IV) An I love you. I had my hair cut for you. I’m ridiculous. I had been dreaming, dreaming, of saying I love you. I had inches and inches and inches of hair off, as you'd asked me to do. He didn't notice. I went to the theatre with my friends and they said, ‘your hair is lovely this length, this I love you of yours, it suits you’. He didn't hear me or see me. He saw Charlotte. She held his hand and sat next to him, turned towards him, hands and fingers around his waist. I couldn't cover my face with my hair. I wanted to cover my eyes and my mouth and my cheeks.

We sat, an awkward set, in pubs and in cafes. She and I, tactile, and she said, Olivia, one day you will stop loving me and then I shall bore you very much. I walked on, on out of the restaurant, on to the street, held her, held onto her arm.

Tomorrow will be a writing day, a letters day, an alphabet day.

I watched you draw hearts on your notes like a teenager.

(Clara in leggings and flip flops and grey socks. Corine says, I've never laughed so much and F is at home, hungry, my beautiful supper uneaten, and too sad and too tearful to come out of her bed and back to us)



I cooked chicken and made salads and we ate them all and we were pleased.

She put on my dress and she put on my shoes.

We're at the fancy dress party. I'm a tanorexic in a short denim skirt, vest, ballet shoes. They straightened my long hair. They painted my arms and my legs and face and knees and fingers with foundation.

We wrap ourselves up and we walk to the library, hand in hand like children. She has thin fingers. We get wet. We are cold. We have essays to write and ex boyfriends who are visiting, who will sleep on mattresses on the floor, on her bed, in my place, in her bed.

Rosanagh has beautiful, dirty shoes. My summer with Anna.




An Introduction.





i
love you and your baked goods. x X x





(He, a monster, a rotter, a horror, writes to her of me, "Your friend is so quiet".)




1.



Here, I'm daydreaming; tears, tears, tears at my desk and in a pool and a little bit of drowning, a little bit of arm waving, and a life guard who hasn't slept in three days.


Where's his beautiful girlfriend?




2.


Imagine! I imagine everything. I complain, my imagination is rubbish, where are the dragons and the monsters and the vampires. I am lying. My imagination is super hot and super good because I'd been imagining that we were in love. I needed a gossip (with diagrams and cups of tea and pens and paper and string and wool) to sew up the holes in the story line.





3.



I used to do this when I was 14 too, on work experience, sit in Burger King on my lunch breaks and think about how I don't want to go back , not back to the office, to the carpets and the chairs and blinds and desks. My nail varnish is lovely. My hands are green from the ink on the files, and so are my finger prints on the table top and my smudges, my leftovers.



She said, I cried and my tears fell on Tom's wrist.


We kiss in the kitchen, my brother's dirty plates on the counter next to us.



4.



Jess and I ate ice cream on the beach. It was lovely. We walked around Snape Maltings. We used to walk there from Iken. It is my favourite walk. We, children, would climb all over the sculptures.






I was her favourite. I imagined we fought over the breakfast room table.

I wished I were a man so she would fall in love with me. I was tired of everything.





5.



(For Laura)



We hung around, like 14 year olds, by the motorway and talked.



Anna and Jordan left, home, and it was just me and him. He sat next to me on the pavement, a hand on my leg. I leant against the railings. The North Circular. There was a tiny little kiss on the lips when we went home in the morning and a tiny bit of hand holding. "it was so nice. i've been brainwashed. he is a dick but he is also quite ok sometimes"




6.



I'm watching Guillemots with a mouth full of bonjela. I watched Guillemots with a mouth full of bonjela. "i am waiting to see guillemots and i have a cold and i want to eat oranges. love you and love to radiant ray xxxx"








7.



I will take another hit for you

and I will take it in the head.



Are you going round the bend? and and and –



He's smoking outside my house. I'm sitting on the curb next to him. There are bores in the kitchen and there are bores in the sitting room.



8.


Anna and I walked to the Rhythm Factory eating chicken nuggets. The Horrors were ace. We liked the music and we wished we could have heard the words. The monsters were all out, out of the closets and the dressing up boxes and from beneath dirty beds with dirty sheets, and faked eyelashed and spidery legged. The other bands were like this: just noise noise noise. We left and ran home in the rain.



9.


This:


i am at work and it is so hot i am going to melt on my desk and they will say "where is olivia" and i will be a little pool of blood and guts and skin and fingernails on the floor by the floppy disk drive and i will seep into the carpet and down through the ceiling to reception. i'm going to make a necklace out of office supplies. i love you. xxxxxxxxx



10.



(I have sticky chocolate all over my fingers and in my mouth and on my teeth and gums and throat. I'll put myself to bed now. I can't really tell you and me apart. You're drunk. I can't speak I'm so sad.)



11.



I fell out of bed and onto a tube and onto my swivel chair at my desk with Oatso Simple from Maccy D's. My summer, of chaos and coffee and Vincent Vincent and the Villains and Long Blondes and Anna and overheated offices and the night bus home and work and that secret, secret feeling, I AM A NIGHT PERSON, and filing and desks and outlook express.




12.



(What should I wear? I wanted to wear clothes to make him fall in love with me. Wear a towel, I liked how you looked when you came out of the shower, she says.)



We bought beer for the children outside and sat in the garden and ate ice creams at the pub. We ate other people's chips.



13.



We shared lamb pasanda and rice and naan bread, all exhausted and with ringing ears. I was happy. We are a gang. Walking home, we sang our hits of the summer. We talked about everything in the world over lunch too. Anna is leaving. We said, we'll act it out tomorrow. Anna will play Liv, Liv will play Anna and Jord will be Hannah. Liv as Anna will say, I'm crying, feel my cheeks. Anna as Liv will feel my cheeks and Jord as Hannah will say, I'm crying on the inside. I will make him a cue card. I won't cry. We have had a hot summer.


Anna and I know all the lines. Jordan cried and I held him and stroked the back of his head as the car went past and Anna went to San Francisco.



15.


Anna and I have black pens and we are leaving words all over, on walls, in toilets, in San Francisco too, Anna. Write to us back. We'll drag you down. We're more fun than her, so come with us. Come come come come come come come come come come with us.




16.



I'm wearing a towel, at my Dad's house, shiny and sweaty and red and clean from a bath. I can hear the sea outside. I need some food. I'm warm.





17.



(that I wanted to stand very close to her, with my head on her chest, breastbone, the kiss on the cheek goodbye. A full room, and me, wrapped up in them.)

We are five now, our family. The three year old, the sixty something year old, the nineteen year old. We are the first.


And: H and E, twenty one and twenty five! my replacements. They will last six weeks.



A sightseeing day, a first day, tourism.

E comes to my bedroom in the evening. She says, goodnight, can you rub this into my back, I’m burnt. Her skin is hot and red, freckled, boneless, under my fingertips. I too have caught the sun. I am pink cheeked.

H is but muscle and chicken wire. She's miserable, says E. She's really miserable. We're washing up the mugs and the cups. We're so tired; we've been talking all night. They grew up on Orkney. I’ve questioned them. Oh, please tell me stories.

I am childish. I daydream of the seas and of the storms, with my hands in the dish water. They talk to me of whales and of 50ft waves.

H says, an old ship carrying crockery and pottery sank ages ago. I used to live by the beaches. For weeks, we found strawberry shaped teapots washed up on the shore.


We talked in the sunshine next to the castle, eating sandwiches. We moved from café to café. We sat on the grass and waited for the bus. A man walked over, wanted our numbers, a drunk, vous êtes si gentilles.



(A collection of days,

1. We walked around in the rain. We waited for the bus at the bus stop with French kids. I said, come on time, come on bus. I took my pink hot water bottle with me, under my coat and on to the bus.

2. The rain got much heavier. We were soaked. I won't see my favourite shop ever again. We sat in little bars for hours. It rained and it rained and it rained.

3. We walked down to the market, it's lovely, it reminds me of York, imagine how nice it would be in the sunshine.)

There's a fight just before supper. H is quiet. We can hear the child crying upstairs.We get the chicken out of the oven. We heated up cans of creamed spinach. The child will only eat the chicken skin. I pick all the skin off the carcass. H and E laugh at me. We are hysterical. I have chicken fat all over my fingers, chicken guts all over my hands.

We went to Champion. We bought apples and oranges and nectarines and tomatoes. H bought beer, shampoo, crisps, a loaf of bread. E bought strawberry fromage frais, pretzels, conditioner, crabsticks, muesli.

Madame E is in the kitchen, a bone to pick. I am tired. I picked at a carcass last night, bones, bones, bones. I'm taken to the fridge, Olivia, what's this, what's this, what's this. I buy the food here. What nightmares we are.

Madame E says, I'll get some rest when I'm in the cemetery.



All the days, incidents, an agenda

I'm a darling, a sweetheart. I translate. I am a translator. “Wash the dishes, the table, inside all the cupboards, the floors, dust the windows, dust the sills, dust, dust, dust, and definitely do not let the child swallow the bleach.”

At supper he wants my food. He won't eat. I feed him, chat to him. The girls are tired. E is drunk. She drops her knife and she drops her fork. Madame E eats bread and she eats cheese while the child eats and not eats.

They are both in H's room, getting drunker and drunker. They'll run away to Italy or Spain. They'll escape.

I translate and wait and hang around, the child clinging to me. E and H clean the kitchen, the bathrooms and the floors. They are tightlipped. They finish working and I finish translating.

They all sit on my bed, so sweet and at home. Julie comes over and she is beautiful with her hair, eye make up and sleeves pulled over her fingers. It's a mess. Je veux toi, je veux toi, says the child. Julie flicks around on the computer, unimpressed with Madame E, the child, with me too probably. We, Julie and I, go to the library and it is lovely and quiet.

I'm holding the child in my arms. He spits on my face and pulls out my hair. I've never been so angry with him. Everyone is quiet and shocked and watching me. I say nothing and the child says nothing.

I carry him upstairs and put on Wallace and Gromit. He is sleepy. H, E and I go outside to our bench to smoke, we are all tired and shocked and hateful. We laugh at how terrible it all is, what a mess.

The child wakes up very late: sweet and sleepy, long eyelashed. I take him downstairs for breakfast: hot chocolate and a biscuit with butter on it. The girls are working. We play upstairs. I bathe him. I dry his hair.


Je veux toi, je veux toi, said the child. He, clingy and fussy, wants only to be in my bedroom, always wrapped around my legs and around my waist. I carry him downstairs and upstairs. We cut out paper snakes and paper butterflies and paper snowflakes on the kitchen table.

At lunchtime Madame E and the child put a card under my bedroom door.In the envelope under my door there was a note that said thank you for looking after the child and I'll never forget you and there was 50 euros.

I went down to the basement to find her and I said thank you very much, it was very kind of you and the basement was very warm and bright.

There was a dead bird in the road. I sat on the bench with E and H while they smoked and looked at the ants and the mosquitoes. I was bitten to bits. I'm worried that they are outdoing me in letters. H writes thousands. I am tired.

I thought, I'll write more later, in bed. I fell asleep with the lights on and the television on.



Julie was looking beautiful today, all eyes and pretty hair. She sent me a funny little English email. She rang me standing outside the house. It was a gorgeous half day. I played with the child. I played with the child in the sunshine.





Today I did not go to Lorient. I don't know if it was a good decision. Instead, I stayed at home, cleaned my bedroom floor, read a little, ate a crème egg because I felt sad, cried, went to bed, got up, made my bed, read a bit. I slow things down. I stop watches.




This kitchen is cold. From the kitchen table, an operating table, a dining room table (talk about knives and forks and scalpels and the hearts of your relatives, loved ones, over dinner, these tables), I can see the boulangerie from where I sit.





I'm watching TV with the sound off. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Do we get to see Benson's heart, skin, thighs, I love yous?




And now everyday:



We have a grown up child: grandmother. We have a pretend grown up: child (parrot, echo).



She: a white bathrobe, bare legs, blue socks with a pink line at the top, brown slippers, her whole unwashed again. The boy: blue pyjamas (far too short), blue slippers with zips and plastic soles, long, long forever eyelashes, straight nose, ugly little mouth.




(I wish: Drunk, drunk, drunk. He says oh my god, Olivia are you drunk? I say, yes a little, laugh.)




She pulls a grey metal chair into the middle of the stone floor, arms either side of the child. He doesn't look at her. He doesn't cry when she hits his legs, once, twice, three times, four times, five times. The child is stiff. He whispers, c'est moi qui commande, raises his finger, moves his head away from her. He whispers. She gets more desperate. She shoves the chair back into the table. Child: c'est pas la peine de crier, with his finger lifted. Her hands are so swollen. She hits, she hits, she hits. Tears.




(I wrote Hannah a birthday card. I wrote emails complaining about how little there is to eat here. I get giddy.)








The fridge door is open (fridge : American, huge, taller than me, white). They are looking in the fridge. Qu'est-ce que tu veux, mais qu'est-ce que tu cherches ? Kiri ? I am washing up their bowls, the juicer, an orange mug, knives. I can see their legs under the fridge door. (Parle, tu sais faire à trois ans et demi. Parle. Tu n'es pas un bébé. Pourquoi tu parles pas?) Legs, such little legs.





Go away because I'll die soon, says the child. He's sitting on a plastic Winnie the Pooh car, his arms crossed over the purple steering wheel. I'll die soon. Why, who told you that? Non, vas t'en.





He stops on the stairs, all sad and crumpled. Hey, come on honey, what's wrong. Let's go upstairs. He's sitting on the stairs, holding on to the railings on the old, old banister.





She pulls him on to the floor screams, As-tu fini ? As-tu fini, hits him again and again and again. He's put back onto the chair, tears running into his mouth. Then: he isn't crying, she thinks he's an actor. He's angry because he can't do as he likes, t'es mechante. She says nothing, kicks his chair hard. He screams but does not cry. Rocks back and forth on his hands, mouth open and very red. She picks up a glass and makes as if she'll throw it in his face. Louder, louder, louder.





A dream last night. She undressed herself and then she undressed me and she tried to kiss me. My mother was in the house. It was my bedroom. She got into my bed, was all "c'mon, c'mon". I wanted her (to stop). I want her to stop. I just want her to stop. She wants me to be found out.






There is more crying. I stand in the corridor and listen. It is morning, lightish, dull day, blue light through the window. I go back to my bedroom, my bed, pull the covers over my head and around my ears and vas t'en noise, please. Please, please.






He's crying when he comes home from school. I try to take him out of his grandmother's arms. He cries harder and harder. Maggie m'a fait pleurer, Maggie m'a tapé. C'est pas grave, je suis la maintenant. Je suis la. Mamie est la.













(I say, we're going on an adventure to find something to eat, come with us. He catches my hand, I'll send you an email.

Good, I say. See you. See you. I let go of his hand.)





He eats mucus producing cream cheese. He's clingy. I feel tired of him. We play catch in the living room. He screams when I catch the ball and screams and screams and screams. I hold him. He scratches my face. I let (him) go. Vas t'en Je veux plus de toi. Vas t'en! Vas t'en. Screaming. Ferme la porte ! I'm sent down stairs.




(I'm still saving things up to tell you and I still miss you.)





He's impossible over dinner, wants to eat dinner downstairs with me sitting next to him. I leave my food (fried chicken, pasta – I didn't want to eat it anyway).




I run the water for his bath. He doesn't want me to touch him. He undresses but needs help with the shirt. He screams, screams, screams, screams, half undressed, red and fat and ugly. I hold him, carry him. She rescues me. The bath water is still running.









I remember I used to write in black biro all over my stomach FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT. The black FATS were upside down because it's easier to write like that. FAT FAT FAT FAT lined up on my skin.






I sleep in late, give myself a headache. I am not tired but I sleep. I want to dream about my friends, want home, London. I dreamt things I cannot remember.





I slept, woke up, went back to bed. I slept, woke up thinking of legs and thighs and shoulders and went back to bed.






I'm tired.











I think I swallow too much Carmex. I think I use too much Savlon. What shall I buy tomorrow in Vannes? A cup of coffee with lots of sugar and no milk. Chocolate fish. I wrote a story about chocolate fish (There was a chocolate fish. He swam in a river. He could feel the salt in his chocolate eye and his chocolate ear and chocolate mouth and on his chocolate fins. The chocolate fish saw a piece of bread. He swam and then bit his big lips around the bread. Pain! Pain, not bread in French (although the chocolate fish was French) but douleur, in the mouth! He was pulled out of the water… To be continued) so now I shall purchase some.



I'm reading about Milan Kundera and his gestures.

Madame E leant back on her chair and said merde very slowly, smiling and it brought her back, hit me in the stomach. Another language: she was sitting opposite me, with her rubbish sense of direction. I thought about genes and family and gestures.




I order coffee in a café, a pain au raison, bought chocolate orange peels for Mum, chocolate hens. No chocolate fish! Spice cake from a man selling honey. I listened to the TV On The Radio on the bus, looking out of the window. I bought a huge wicker basket.


Carmex is making me sick. There are bones and ribs under my skin.




I am always hungry.



The child ate up all his fish fingers, didn't touch his pasta. He sat on my lap, wriggling (keep thinking about his insides, intestines, kidneys, they seemed so close to my skin and bone and muscle). My knee damp with child warmth. I long for grown ups.





The house: there are four floors, two kitchens, four bathrooms, four living rooms, halls, staircases, dust, so many bedrooms.










I run, feet shoved in these grey, pink slippers. The doctor and Madame E (dressing gown, night dress). The telephone, the child starts to cry. I run up to him, hearing his funny little bare feet running about. He is damp and he smells stale. He is crying. His bed is clammy and warm.




The child and I drew pictures of Father Christmas and of Christmas trees and I taught him how to write the letter A. I love that whenever he signs his name there will be the A I helped him write with little dots for him to join up.





All today: stay alive, do not die, what would I do. I had breakfast with them both, though came down to the child in tears. A fight at the breakfast table, a little boy who lies. He is pulled on to her lap, all tearful and tired, still, still for a bed and kneels on her lap, his little legs falling down next to her. I wanted tea, an apple. The child wants my tea, wants an apple, wants me to make him orange juice, wants not to go to school really, if you could drag your feet more.






I woke up earlyish today and padded ever so quietly down for breakfast before my little French nightmare woke up. I ate muesli while Madame E ate her bowl of café au lait with biscuits and fussed over the child, how naughty and terrible he is.




I followed yellow signs that said Diversion!

The pub was full of grey and black and white.
In a window, my bag and coat on the floor, by Lindsay’s legs, glass in hand; I make my way over to the bar. I see: your arm around her, reaching behind her back, your fingers clinging to her waist. I am tired of you. And this is when I become: hysterical and sad and drunk and hyper. Let’s leave, let’s move on, come on. Let’s leave now without saying goodbye. Come on. We beautiful ones, we do not care and we can have anything and anyone we want. Leave us alone, do not slow us down.




We sit in the nighttime in a garden in Brick Lane on wooden benches eating rice, chicken, cous cous. We walk home. X on my phone, where are you? Where are you and then I love you and we go home and my I love you back.

The service station is grey. Mum talks to Tom's parents outside. It's cold. Mum and Anne say, hasn't it been quiet with them gone, so much food in the house, and none of their music, and so much shampoo left over, and no washing and no cooking. I think about the coach crashing and the full fridge and empty washing machine.

The coach pulls up. Jack hugs me and I get a kiss too. He's so tall and grown up and my brother.

What, sweetie. I hated France quite a lot.



I would like a typewriter.



There are pink curtains in my bedroom, not my bedroom. They are pink and white. There are tiny flowers on the curtains. There is a blue ink stain (my stain, mine, not my bedroom) on the bedspread, next to a yellow rose. My room, with the little boy upstairs, little French tears, en larmes, larmoyante. I'm clumsy (dirty face, beneath the bed, hide). I like navy on a dirty white eiderdown.



I'm sitting on my bed with Graham Greene and Rosamond Lehmann for company. I have a desk. I have a desk and dust everywhere, covered in dust.





There is a lady at the end of the road who makes alterations to your clothes. I'm going to take my favourite jeans and a skirt that I liked, which is size 16 for my size 10 (and you).


(I am 8 years old, I'll be the Mummy and you can be my child.)

I will be a paper doll and you can cut out the clothes.





London to Paris, Paris to Nowhere: to southern Brittany in September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April. It's fucking bleak.





I'm spending my time avoiding loud floorboards and wishing I could write: for her birthday we went out dancing. We danced to the hits from the 70s. She knew all the words and I felt so tired and her feet hurt. Her shoes were beautiful. This and that in London first.



Everyone's glad they're more in love with her. I'm all talk. I don't want them to find this out. Write love letters! Kiss her!



Dear,
I'm sorry I didn't kiss you.
Love,
Olivia



I'm going to write a whole book of gibberish.




Dear,
I wish I kissed you that time in the park.
O xxx




I'm all talk. It's my closely kept secret. Write love letters! Kiss her!





Everyone's ill. I made the child spaghetti. He threw it all over the floor and all over the sofa and the ham all over the floor.


______,
I should have kissed you at the train station. I wish I had.
O



I mustn't wake anyone up with my banging and clanging body. Are we all calm now?



It's all so unhappy. I don't like having my meals made for me. Let me eat the tomatoes in the fridge. Let me have money to spend on food and I'll cook for myself. The phone.





Dinner tonight: fried veiny chicken, cauliflower with green salty seasoning. I couldn't eat it all. Cram it into my mouth while she's not looking, swallow don't choke. My lips are salty and dry and my stomach is bloated.





I walked with Bloc Party in my ears, with xylophones and painful deaths. I didn't really feel like a French accent today. I'm tired of France.




I still think my favourite part of going to Lorient is the bus journey. I love it so much. Because I ran out of the house this morning, on the bus I could taste my moisturiser and my lip balm. Can you tell from the terrible handwriting that I'm tired? I just want to go home.



Le Gare D'Exchanges, the worst part of the journey: off and out of the bus: walk along side the building, cross the road, (laundrettes, hairdressers, property developers), Carrefour, gauche: tabac, tabac, photo studio, grey, grey, concrete. The cinema to your right, the song in your ear, louder, louder, louder. No music, cross the road, a new landscape, nothing, nothing, nothing.



Home, home, home, even with headaches.



That little terror in the mornings: has the child gone to school. The day terror, the telephone and how loudly it rings and who is ringing, like what's the time Mr Wolf. Le Loup! He's coming! The child learnt a story today about a wolf who cried and cried and cried.




I don't know what to do for my birthday. What should I do? I would like a beautiful party, with a beautiful birthday cake with roses and blue icing. I want him to come, late, with friends, I wouldn't mind. At a party so many things can go wrong. My birthday party, we would have Adam Green and Cocorosie and I would wear a dress. There would be beautiful food and my friends would stay until morning. He would kiss me and not forget me and text me and think of me and the way the blue icing tasted in my mouth, with pink champagne. And probably XXXX would see and feel terrible and turned on and confused. In the garden, Anna and Katie would smoke and I will put up Chinese lanterns for them the day before.




He ate a plate of crisps and a croissant and a baguette and a plate of crisps and half a baguette and half a box of la vache qui rit and a whole cambert and he drank my tea and ate my ham and swallowed a baguette.



Je veux te dire quelque chose, the child says. What sweetie, I say. Je t'aime. Oh thank you.



Mamie, est-ce que tu l'aimes, Olivia ? he says. Mais oui chérie, bien sur.



Je l'aime, Olivia, he says. Je sais, chérie. A fat, big three year old. The child crawls over the kitchen chairs, climbs onto my lap and I touch his nose and say, no sleeping, little boy. Where's your little hand. Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear, one step, two step.





Today I read the newspaper and underlined the bits I thought were important and I cut up magazines and things like that. I didn't write any letters. My aunt said in her letter that she is reading Lord of The Flies. Mum said, how did she miss it in her childhood. How strange to be reading it now.



Non, c'est Olivia. I put on his shoes, scarf, coat. It's cold again, rainy. He walks to the back door and then runs back to me. Olivia. Oui? Bye, bye. A toute a l'heure!




The beautiful startling petite lady runs with no make up and no lovely red lipstick to the bus. Her face is so fine. Je peux payer avec un cheque? Where's her purse, her coat? She looks at me. I imagine that the bus driver says no, cash and she says, oh but I don't have any you know, I just need to go to a cash point, I was in such a rush and the bus driver says, well, and she should get off the bus if she can't pay, with her unlipsticked lips and fine face. I say, it's ok, I'll pay, no really, you can pay me back or something later (I would not say because you remind me of _____________ and you remind me of someone careful with their words and pronouns) and she says, oh let me take your address.



Eleven days to go- hardly anything! Nothing at all! It will fly by. And a whole day to myself on the train. A whole day. My birthday on the train.




Today we looked for shells in the back garden. We found four and I washed them and some of the shell flaked in the basin. I looked for pebbles for the child's yellow pick up truck and tied a piece of string to its front grill.



We found a ladybird. The child nearly squashed it with his big fat fingers. The ladybird crawled onto his hands and we took it into the kitchen to show the grandmother.



At lunchtime I walked to the supermarket listening to Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was windy and hot and dry and cars drove past me. There was no pavement. I daydreamed about being a famous and talented author; I've been working on a piece that speaks of sex and desperation.






I clatter about, my bags and my coat. My teeth brushed in the kitchen sink, spit washed down the sink. I make a la vache qui rit sandwich.



Later on the bus I don't listen to music, and later on the train I can't read. A wordless, thingless boring journey starts. The circus rolls into town and bus stop. The circus, the circus came to town on my birthday, I think. There’s a change of buses. I wait, wait, wait for No.5 in Pleuvivy. It's a horrible dead end. Worry, worry, worry. I am 19 today. I had a headache when I woke up and a strawberry mark on my forehead when I was born.









I wrote in my pink bedroom, in a tiny French village. There was all this too.




There's blood on the zebra crossing: an old man cycled into road works, into a hole. There is blood on the road. The firemen took him away to hospital for the blood on the road and on the zebra crossing.

Today was a crying day. We all cried tears that got stuck to our eyelashes. The person I made cry had tears stuck to her glasses and to her cheeks. Yesterday was a shouting and a crying day. Today we have sticky, gluey tears.

I'm wasting days and paper. I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up.

In Monopoly, I bought their love and all the reds and all the yellows. They hanged me after Cluedo, an accident in the Billiard room, the lead piping, the back of Reverend Green's head. Poor murderous Peacock.


I've dropped cake on my floor.

We all walked around with paper hearts stuck to our chests. " Oh where is my heart", " faut pas déchirer mon cœur", " je vais mourir". A tiny cannibal ate my little paper heart.

Madame E. bought me chocolate cornflakes.

Her top lip, the skin above her cheek and below her eyes, the skin under her ear.

In my front garden, N picked me up and twirled me around.

I wrote to Amanda in a beautiful pink letter, which she says she never got. I'm tired.

Benjamin came over and I hid in my pyjamas in a cupboard.

I must write about last night, her fingertips on my elbow and the Vaseline from her mouth on mine. Go on, I don't care. You're not even in love with someone else.

Fell very briefly in love with Clare from Michael Cunningham's A Home At The End Of The World. I love her between the pages 64 and 132.

(I dreamt: caught kissing a lady with red hair, kneeling on chairs, my lips on her collarbone, my mother at the doorframe. I am not in love with a libertine.


And the fallout of these kisses: an argument, Catherine wheels, Catherine's Palace, with my lips on her collarbone. I'm stuck in Russia, in other people's bedrooms.)


All I do in France is dream.

I daydreamed that she fell while we were on the way to her car in the dark in the car park. I couldn't catch her but I brushed the gravel off her hands and wrists and she blushed and was very quiet.

I dreamt I was sitting in a chair, facing away from her. She came over; she had her arms wrapped around me, like I was a child. I said, I just can't think at all.


She put on the radio and it was a song that I know all the words to. I said, this is terrible, but I didn't mean that it was bad. I meant that it was going to break my heart. She lowered her lips so they just touched my forehead because you're not allowed to kiss, and I cried and I cried.

The bathroom is warm. I'm eating a tomato in my room. I think I'm drawn to houses with ghosts in them. I am pretty thirsty.


My toenails! They're so long because my manicure scissors are lying in a box of beads in my bedroom in London and I'm not near my box of beads in London, with Razorlight not going back to Dalston and Hot Chip being the hottest chip in the pan. I will have to buy some from the supermarché. Eleanor of the Fiery Furnaces is singing, do you wish my little boy was cute like mine, and I just wish I could speak French already, Oh have a pain au chocolat with your Guardian that costs nearly a zillion euros.


It's not a round tomato, it's an oval tomato and I don't want to go downstairs to get myself water because the ghosts might be there.

I stopped breathing when when he stood there on my doorstep looking so beautiful and angular and when you kissed me in the park. And I think, this has got to stop happening because I could die. My heart would not beat, all because I got kissed, or someone was pretty and someone else was on my doorstep. I could die.

There are things about this summer I never want to forget.


In Greece, I came at a time when all my friends were ill and down. In my diary I wrote, Everyone here is ill and down. As I waited to fly there were groups of girls and boys and some were even at the same hotel as me. I remember thinking that, maybe, because the flight was cheapish, that the airline had scrimped on our travel rep. If you imagine Barbie, fatter, uglier, after a life of hard drinking and too much sunshine with Greek men, the makeup she wore at 17, then you're somewhere close to my travel rep.


My nights are spectacularly confused (Oh, you say, count my fingers 12457, and that's it, Liviana Sultana).


(I liked the ends of the nights best. I liked my sandy feet in my bed) I remember waking everyone up as I tried to find a space to sleep in. Swazzie and Cam looking so ill, but being so very sweet (and then too, I remember Cam talking of dreams, of insecurities and Cam driving Swaz up the wall).


I won't lie to you. I looked a zillion dollars in my head with strings of beads and I walked through other people's photographs.


There are things so desperately I don't want to forget. The dress rehearsal in Brighton for the Scissor Sister concert that evening, the after show party too, sweeties. And I thought, as I stood watching them having their hair done (oh my, scissors on the brain, next to the scalp, under the spotlight), stupidly, I wish I had a camera. Ana applied her lipgloss in the base drum and then she sang Papa Was A Rolling Stone a cappella into the microphone (it sounded sweet, I thought), her bare feet and her white thighs when she took off her skirt. Her eye makeup, jaw line, cheekbones, gosh. The sweat in Jake's hair, the spreading wet patch on his trousers. And at the same time I began to feel a little bit uneasy. The man next to me kept his feather boa in my face and there was this, fabulous, aren’t they fabulous thing going on. I think, I realised you just can't love everything because you start to hurt so I think I chose not the love the feather boas. I watched Ana.


And then the concert itself, although, fabulous, fabulous, darling, Swaz and I both agree that they were perhaps a little better at Brixton in April. There was more of an edge to the crowd; it was a little more exciting. Maybe they were just tired. Or maybe we were just tired. I've seen them a stupid amount of times now, from the very beginning in London almost. 7 times, we counted.

I wrote anyway. I wrote a stupid amount.


Our beautiful road trip, the hotel rooms and the junk food we ate in the car.

I want to remember being close enough to touch Johnny Borrell but being too scared to.
And I never want to forget the way Dalston sounds when he's singing it right in front of you, but more, when it fills your ears and mouth in CL's car, when lines are texted to you, saying don't go to France.


German MTV, beautiful Ruth, and I'm on the bed with all these sleepy, beautiful girls.
And it happened very quickly, I can't say no.


Then I ran with no shoes to catch Anna and Katie. Anna said, I'm crying, feel my cheeks, and I did and they were wet and warm. Behind me Hannah said, I'm not really a crying person. I'm crying on the inside.


N and Claire were there and everyone else left and I tried so desperately to put off saying goodbye to them.


On the envelopes of the cards given to me, Camilla wrote Olivia! LK started, Dear Livi and Kat called me Honey and enclosed useful information about Paris, which was far more glamorous than where I was going.

I said, Goodbye Pizza Hut. Goodbye tube. Mum said, Well, let's not blow this out of proportion.


We know all the words to these love letters and these love songs now. Now I live in France.


I miss you, N, CL, Swaz, Jack, Jess, Dan, Sam, Anna, Hannah, LK, Pybus, Ruth, C, Kat, Camilla, Laura, Darling and Gemma.

Love,

Liv xxx

(Dear K, I'd write.)

Then there was an intruder in our house and stalking around downstairs. My favourite intruder, he wore a grey suit and a top hat. He carried a walking stick, a walking stick that doubled up as a machine gun (my brother and my mother, blood on the clock, on the walls, blood on your eyelashes, a wire around my neck). He made a pastrami sandwich. He walked out with my laptop.


I made bracelets that said lovely and hello and this is more a comment on my limited vocabulary.


There are things I want to tell you, if you called me. My hot water opened, unscrewed; I drowned in my green bed.


I scribbled on your face.

My brother's chatting to his girlfriend in bed, and I'm caught up in old things.


I've been thinking about it and I've come to realise that I'd seduce you with Love Hearts.

PJ Harvey, in pink stilettos and who is the King and the Queen, falls over, and I am not pretty to boys from Essex.

(Stars stick to my eyelids and to the corners of my mouth, blood on my knuckles and on my eyelashes. Death-disco drama queen, I miss you. I miss you.)

I need a necklace that says Olivia on it, don't you think.

I'm trying to sleep with sunlight coming through the windows and Swaz leans over and says, I didn't know you wrote a diary.


And so, I fell in love with the idea of the man next to me on the plane. He watched me read, I could feel it.