At work earlier this week, I thought: I’m just gonna see how many hours I have to be here before I can leave, just to see, really quickly, just to know. So I looked, and the answer was: eight. That was a sad day. Outside it was heavy with cold and grey, and inside we moped around, sloped around like moles, like wombats – Do moles mope? Do wombats slope? – I don’t know, but it’s dark where they are, and it was just like that, that day there were eight hours yet to get through before we burst out into the air, free and clear.

There is so much outside, is the thing, even when it is heavy and cold and grey, whereas inside we are going nowhere fast. Wednesday night at the Elk in the Woods – and truly outside it was cold and grey and drizzling pinpoints of icy rain – I was sitting in the booth with my back against the red wallpaper. The printed line drawings of lotus flowers reached up the wall and into the corners. The waiter in the striped jersey – he was tall. His hair fell over his eye – brought me a pineapple mojito, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Jennifer coming up Camden Passage. Jennifer, we hadn’t seen each other in six years, maybe, and we hugged, and we smiled, and then we couldn't stop talking. She is exactly the same as and exactly different from six years ago. This is Jennifer: One morning in Atlanta, Georgia, some six years ago, she introduced me to grits. One afternoon in Paris, France, some nine years ago, we stood outside her apartment with Melissa to watch, through the open window, Kate roasting a turkey in the kitchen. We were on Study-Abroad, it was Thanksgiving back in America, and Kate had smoked up the room. She was wearing goggles. Later that night, we had the turkey. A green bean casserole. Sweet potatoes, baked, with browned marshmallows on top. Pecan pie. It was my first big American feast – in Paris, France. Jennifer, she works with trees. She is going to open a restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. There will be ice creams. I might write her menu. Jennifer, she has these eyes. She has this smile. We talk about our mothers. We talk about the world. We talk about art.

This morning in the office, everything is different, because, one, the bosses aren’t here yet, and because, (b), as Olive said last night, “C’est le week-end.” There are two boys who are working in the office this summer, one is the son of the boss, the other is the friend of the son of the boss, and they are boys in the best sense of the word – lanky indie boys who go to indie gigs, who are just out of uni, who eat massive sandwiches. They go out with girls in bands, and have crushes on girls whose art projects are strong and soft at the same time, like dreams. Sahil juggles. Jamie plays us music. They ballroom-dance, sometimes, in the middle of the room, and you don’t know if it’s Fred or Ginger being twirled in the rolly chair.



Truly, c’est le week-end. When I got home last night, Suzzan had left a message on my answerphone. “I have made the brownies,” she said.