Free The ABCs of Love by Sarah Salway

back. Together we watched the woman flutter her hands here and there until he remembered what he was there for and started to wipe the papers with the wet cloth in his hands.
    “Don’t.” She was almost shouting. “These are important. They’re Work things.” That’s how she spoke. Gave
Work
a capital letter, as if that was all she had in her life. All she had left to her. After she’d gone, I watched the other people in the café give one another little smiles. I hoped she’d get into trouble when she got back to the office. I felt no guilt. Didn’t she know it was women her age who were ruining my life?
    The next night John came round and said he was wrong. That he couldn’t let me go. That he’d see a way of making things all right. I made a point of lifting up my hair and asking him to kiss the back of my neck. I told him women loved that, because I guessed he sometimes tried out things we did with Kate. “Is it smooth?” I asked. “Are there any lines there?” He whispered into my skin that I was beautiful, flawless, a national treasure. I turned my head round so his mouth was against my cheek, just by my ear.
    “I really couldn’t bear to be lined and ugly,” I said. “I’ll be perfect for you forever.”
    He smiled, but something was wrong. It was the first time I’d been with John and felt guilty. He kept poking his tongue at my skin until I had to push him off.
    See also Breasts; Endings; Mistaken Identity; Youth
    omelet
    My mother always used to say that it was impossible to make an omelet without breaking eggs. It seemed substantial at the time, like something I should listen to, but I can’t help wondering what it all meant now. Of course you need to break the eggs. It’s just common sense.
    See also Elephant’s Egg; Endings; Old; Questions; Voices; X
    omens
    The world has become a more interesting place since I fell in love.
    A magpie flying overhead used to be just a black-and-white bird. It is now a sign that today is going to be awful, so I have to spend the next hour searching for another to balance it out. Two birds flying together fills me with joy. It means that John really does love me. That we’re going to be happy together forever.
    That black cat crossing the road . . . the chimney sweep . . . the four-leaf clover. If I go into a pub and count ten blond-haired men, if the sandwich I’ve picked with my eyes shut turns out to be chicken, if I can get to that shop without seeing a red car. . . .
    If.
    See also Horoscopes; Love Calculators; Telephone Boxes;
Utopia
    only children
    Sally and I are both only children. John is the youngest of three. He has two children of his own. There are bound to be things he can’t understand about me that Sally can.
    There is a responsibility about being an only child. On the one hand, you are the most wanted person in the universe, the one who completes the family, the little plastic figure who makes living in the dollhouse worthwhile. On the other, you bear single-handedly the pressure of changing someone’s life beyond recognition. When things go wrong, it can be no one else’s fault but yours.
    This is a lot for a child to have to cope with.
    There was a psychological experiment once. They put a group of strangers in a room and forbade them to speak to one another. Then they asked them to circle round, just looking, until they found someone they wanted as their potential partner. They all chose, but remember they hadn’t spoken yet. When they finally got to talk to their partner, the vast majority found that they had paired up with someone who shared the same place in the family as they did. Youngest child with youngest child, older with older, middles with middles. I like to think the experiment finally ended when the only children were peeled off the outside walls and forced to join in with the rest. Maybe they would then have made cynical comments about the easy comradeship of the other people there, but more likely, they would have