Free The ABCs of Love by Sarah Salway Page B

of the weakest links.
    Dawn never had a happy day at school again after that. Sometimes she tried to talk to me because I was left on my own at playtime too, but I’d turn my back on her.
    Couldn’t she see being hated was something two people could never have in common?
    See also Captains; Start-rite Sandals; Vendetta

P
    pain index
    If John and I were together all the time, I know we would be able to speak normally to each other. The trouble is, when we speak on the telephone now, I have a second conversation—the things I really want to know— going on in my mind. This makes it difficult to talk, so when I do eventually say what I want to say, it comes out too quickly and harshly and I start crying.
    John says he can’t bear it. He just wants things back to being as they were. He says I need to find a way round this.
    See also Nostrils; Utopia
    phantom e-mails
    The first time I e-mailed myself, it was just a joke. To see what would happen. I wrote:
    Dear Verity,
    You are my life. Every time I wake up, I wish you were next to me. Nothing is worth us being apart.
    And then one click of a button and it was gone. I forgot all about it, but the next time I checked my e-mails, I felt a rush of joy when I saw there was one waiting for me in my in-box.
    It was everything I could have wanted. Brian must have seen the smile on my face because he started teasing me. I had to admit that, yes, I had just received a wonderful note. “You are my life,” I whispered to myself. For the rest of that day, everyone was nicer to me than they usually are. I think they wanted to rub a little of my joy off onto their own lives.
    I kept checking all day, but there wasn’t another e-mail. Late at night, after a bottle of wine, I went on the Internet again. By the time I got into the office in the morning, there were three e-mails waiting for me, each one as magical as the first. This has made me see what I’m missing in my life, and how easy it would be to make it happen.
    See also God; Mistaken Identity; Zero
    phone calls
    Since I’ve started receiving the e-mails, I’ve been feeling better. I’ve also had more courage about contacting John at work. I rang him up once when I knew he was in a meeting. I imagined his little office full of people talking about kitchen equipment.
    “I can’t stop wanting you,” I said. “Do you want me too?”
    He told me yes, he believed he did.
    “Would you like to make love to me now, on the carpet, with everyone looking?” I asked. He said that that would be a consideration and that he would think about it very hard when it was more convenient.
    “I’d take off all my clothes,” I said, “and climb on your lap. You’d be wearing your suit, but I’d be able to feel how much you wanted me through the material. I’d rub my bare skin all over you.”
    He said that this was definitely a matter he needed to spend more time on. He wondered if it would be possible for us to talk about it later. When we could take it further. In more depth. Perhaps there were other angles he needed to investigate.
    I put the phone down then. When we did talk about it later, he told me that he suddenly realized that he was cradling the receiver like a baby and stroking the telephone cord like it was my hair. Everyone in the room, he said, was staring at him.
    He made me promise never to do it, ever again, but that night we made love for such a long time, he missed his train home and had to get a taxi.
    See also Codes; Marathons; Teaching; Vacuuming
    pop stars
    Last week after we’d made love, John told me that when he was a teenager, people used to think he looked like David Bowie. He asked me which pop star I used to fancy when I was young. The phrase sounded so odd and old-fashioned coming from him like that.
Pop
star. Fancy.
I wanted to giggle.
    We were in bed. John had his eyes shut, and the way he was lying against the pillow made him look as if he had a double chin, so I found a little spot on the ceiling to