介绍:
And how is Rome? How is La Dolce Vita? (look it up). I imagine you right now at a café table, drinking one of those
‘cappuccinos’ we hear so much about, and wolf-whistling at . You’re probably wearing sunglasses to read this. Well take them off, you look ridiculous. Did you get the books I sent you? Primo Levi is a fine Italian writer. It’s toremind you that life isn’t all gelati and espadrilles. Life can’t always be like the opening of Betty Blue. And how is teaching? Please promise me you’re not sleeping with your students. That would just be so . . . disappointing.
Must go now. Bottom of page looms, and in the other room I can hear the thrilling murmur of our audience as they throw chairs at each other. I finish this job in two weeks THANK GOD, then Gary Nutkin, our director, wants me to devise a show for infant schools about Apartheid. With PUPPETS for fuck’s sake. Six months in a Transit on the M6 with a Desmond Tutu marionette on my lap. I might give that one a miss. Besides, I’ve written this two-woman play about Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson called ‘Two Lives’ (either that or ‘Two Depressed Lesbians’). Maybe I’ll put that on in a pub-theatre somewhere. Once I’d explained to Candy who Virginia Woolf was, she said that she really, really wanted to play her, but only if she can take her top off, so that’s the casting sorted. I’ll be Emily Dickinson, and keep my top on. I’ll reserve you tickets.
In the meantime, I have to choose whether to sign-on in Leeds or sign-on in London. Choices, choices. I’ve been trying to fight moving to London – it’s so PREDICTABLE, moving to London – but my old flatmate Tilly Killick(remember her? Big red glasses, strident views, sideburns?) has a spare room in Clapton. She calls it her ‘box room’, which doesn’t bode well. What’s Clapton like? Are you coming back to London soon? Hey! Maybe we could be flatmates?
‘Flatmates?’ Emma hesitated, shook her head and groaned, then wrote ‘Just kidding!!!!’ She groaned again.
‘Just kidding’ was exactly what people wrote when they meant every word. Too late to scribble it out now, but how to sign off? ‘All the best’ was too formal, ‘tout mon amour’ too affected, ‘all my love’ too corny, and now Gary Nutkinwas in the doorway once again.
‘Okay, places everyone!’ Sorrowfully he held the door open as if leading them to the firing squad, and quickly, before she could change her mind, she wrote—
God I miss you, Dex
—then her signature and a single kiss scratched deep into the pale blue air-mail paper.
