I washed the sheets and the towels in time for Kat pulling up on the corner in a pink taxicab. Days we were out – there were walls of jam and candy counters calling and Turkish delights, it seemed, ’round every corner – and when we were not admiring Louise Bourgeois’s dreamy, fantastical cells at the Modern (so many chairs hanging, so much red, a pair of knitted mittens, so much anger and longing), we were choosing between wild strawberry and pistachio gelati at Spitalfields, or tracking down fish-and-chipses for Sunday lunch.

The girl’d brought a photocopied list of shops to hit, and had highlighted the key destinations in a faint yellow. In one store, I flicked through argyle knits and countless peach T-shirts on the discount rack before I gave up trying. “All these clothes are ugly,” I said in despair. “Don’t say that!” Kat said, and she carefully slid the hangers from right to left on the aluminium rail. “They’re all beautiful,” she said, “because they’re on sale.”



Saturday night we arrived early for dinner. We sat on the barstools at Moro with a kir royal and a cava royal, and when Olive came in the door, he said, “What’s that?” “It’s a royale,” I said, “wit’ cheese.” I talk like I know but all I can remember from that movie is Uma Thurman waking up from her overdose and the royale with cheese. Ask me what I can remember from Donnie Darko. I remember Jake Gyllenhaal lying in the street, I remember the rabbit in the mirror. I remember following the wormhole through the house. Mostly I remember – and this wasn’t in the movie, really – Emily finding herself standing behind Jake Gyllenhaal in a queue somewhere in L.A. Em is hot stuff so chances are they could’ve driven off into the sunset had she tapped him on the shoulder and said something to him; but instead he’s with Reese, or at least that’s what Olive says – and Olive is the kind of guy who has no qualms picking up the grody issue of Grazia magazine from a public place and taking it home to read it in bed, without a care that sixteen people could’ve picked their nose and flipped the pages before he got to it, so I’d say his devotion to the celebrity cause is pretty well set.