I took a gander down to the Ridley Road market, because it has always looked like the kind of place where a girl can get a deal. A pound for a crate of mangoes, someone told me once, though I wondered, later, what I would do if ever such a proposition came my way. How many mangoes does a crate make? And what is a girl to do with such wealth? Mango bellinis, one assumes, mango jam, mango cake. Mango curry? Mango salsa? Mango peeled and eaten over the sink, juices running down your arm?



The fruit sellers and veg sellers were at it Wednesday afternoon, calling “darlin” and “sweetheart” and “luv”. The egg sellers and cloth sellers and pot sellers and sock sellers were at it, too. The fish sellers were quiet. The stalls lined both sides of a dirty street, and jewelled globe grapes and green melons and flame-coloured peppers burst into the day. Fat oranges were fat and orange as if a kid had come round and drawn them in the morning. (The mangoes were two for a pound.) (No deal.)



Under a sign saying “African Caribbean Nigerian Specialities” I paused by a man transferring large shells from a bucket to a cardboard box on his display. “You know what it is?” a passing mother said to her child. “Snails!” she said, and my toes curled. They walked on, this woman in her print dress and her wide-eyed son, but I couldn’t move. The man was holding a snail in each of his palms, and he turned to me. “You like?” “Um,” I said, and I couldn’t move, and the giant snails in their shells were each larger than my fist. They were as large as my two fists put together, maybe, though probably larger still. They were at least as large as the churning in my stomach. The man was transferring the shells from the bucket to the cardboard box, he’d toss one shell on top of the pile, and then another, and another, and each time the shells moved and adjusted themselves unaided I wanted to scream. “Where do you find these?” I said, instead of screaming. “The bush,” he said, and still he moved the snails one by one. Look up insouciance in the dictionary and you see a picture of a man with giant snails in his hands. “How do you cook them?” I said, the scream was within me, and he said, “Like meat. With spices. You stew, add spices.” “You cook them with the shell on?” I said, and it was a twisted curiosity that kept me rooted. “No,” he said, “shell off.” I could feel the snails crawling up my leg, I could feel their giant sluggish sluggy slug slug slugging up my leg, and all around me that heavy odour of dried fish, of dried salted fish and their dried, salted fish eyes. “You like?” the man said again, and I felt I had to flee. “I think,” I said, “I’mnotquitereadyforthisyetthankyou!”

Down by the veg man behind the hand-tied bundles of herbs, nothing was moving in a slug-like manner. He sold me some leeks with a wink and a smile.

We only got lost once, and only for a little bit, and Laureen said, quietly, “Are we in Zone Six?” We were in Barking, it turned out, and where, in my mind, Barking is a picturesque canine town with a greyhound tailor and a dachshund librarian, Barking was in fact characterised by a distinct lack of dogs, sausage or otherwise. In Barking, the sky was a dirty white, though the sun’d been out when we’d left the Spence Bakery with waxed-paper bags of road trip treats, and in Barking the promise of a seaside holiday seemed to float off into the smudgy wind.

“I like to call it ‘freestyle navigation’,” Marc said. “Turn right here.” At the corner of nowhere and nothing, the unmarked street veered ninety degrees into the future. Emily – she was dressed in blue and white like the promise of a seaside holiday – put the car into drive and kept going straight.

I don’t know how they did it, those two up front by the iPod plugged in, but what with the combined powers of freestyle navigation and the UK road atlas (£1.99 on special), in no time the dirty streets of the city had been replaced by shades of green and gold stretching out left and right. “The countryside!” I said. “This is great!” “I hadn’t heard that in a while,” Marc said. The signs started to count down the miles to Whitstable, then, and on the horizon the sky was blue and bluer.



Down a slope and straight ahead, Whitstable was nestled in between the sea and the Sunday sky. We rolled down the windows to smell the salt on the air. We cruised past the Chinese restaurant and the chip shop. From the harbour the fishy pong; we kept going. The beach was at the bottom of a grassy knoll: we parked and picked our way down, blankets and towels and picnics in hand. In Whitstable, brightly painted wooden huts stand like boiled-sweet houses in a row by the water. We set up shop in front of the candy cane one in red and white, the one with the wooden seagull next door.



We have a knack for picnics, is what we have, and it is as good a knack as any, especially because it brings with it the footloose and the fancy-free. Back in February, packing her bags to move to London, Laureen’d e-mailed, “Do you think we will picnic much? Should I bring a small cooler?” “Just wondering,” she’d e-mailed. This is one reason we have been friends this long, I think, because Laureen wonders important things. Sunday the cooler was full of cheese and prosecco. From our various bags we unpacked tomatoes and avocados and cheese-stuffed olives, we revealed blackberries and papayas and chocolate-covered strawberries, we disclosed homemade hunks of banana cake and heavy, sugar-dusted brownies. Marc surveyed the spread in front of us and said: “There is no meat.” “What?” Olive said, and there seemed to be an edge to his voice. “There is no meat.” They were solemn for a moment, these boys, before they tucked in, probably realising the fancy French bread wouldn’t last if they didn’t make their claims upon it soonest.



Afterwards we stretched out, because that is step two in the process of picnics, and an old-timey plane revved and rattled steadily in the sky. My arms were very warm, and my shoulders even more so. Marc and Olive were skipping stones on the water.

Olive and I took a walk to the right later, just before the laziness threatened to immobilise me. The walk to the right took us past the little girls in the Hawaiian skirts, past the motorised horse with ribbons in his hair, past the food van selling only jelly candies and licorice rope. A kid walked away with candy string trailing from her arms. Her smile was a candy smile. We passed huts orange and peach; striped in blue and white; trimmed, as if in icing, with a painted lacy border. We passed a set-up of shells like a missive from a mermaid.

All the way to the right, before the path turned to a rough stroke of sand through the high grass, the boys in skull-and-crossbones prints and crudely cut-off trousers hunched in the sun. Their skateboards were stuck with stickers that said “Hate” in scratchy letters. Their hair fell into their eyes. They swooped and flew in a concrete skate park. They chewed on candy and they left a cloud of skunk in their wake. There was this one girl, in black, with black hair and black eyes, and her black T-shirt had been rolled up to just under her breasts. The boys liked her.

We passed the ice cream van on the way back. Apparently the proprietor’s name, and it must have been clear to him when he was but a wee lad what he was going to do with his life, is Mr Ices.



Two thumbs up for a seaside holiday!, what with the smell of grilled fish from makeshift barbecues on the pebble beach, and the sailboats leaning into the breeze. We began to make enquiries into a beach hut, Laureen and I did, accosting a man and a woman as they headed for their door. “How do you get one of these?” the man said, and he was jovial because he knew. “You get lucky!” he said, chuckling at his own joke. “You know how much they cost?” the man said, and he smiled wide. “Fifteen to seventeen thousand pounds!” In his eyes danced the rest of his retirement days, and you could almost see the gentle waves that lap-lap-lapped at the edges of his dreams. “Best thing we ever did,” he said, and he was genuinely pleased. “Well,” he said, turning to his wife behind him, “we have to go and cook a three-course meal now.” “Oh!” Laureen said. “We’ll join you!” He was smiling still when he said, “No.”



We lolled about till we could loll no more – truly there can be too much lolling about – and then we tripped up the grassy knoll and collapsed into the car. Right and right again took us into town, where the multicoloured pennants hung in the air like a parade day. “If I were mayor of a town,” I said, “I’d have bunting up all the time.” “Would each flag,” Marc said from the front seat, “say ‘This is great!’?” “Why, yes,” I said, and I leaned back and was proud.

We strolled past the fish place – “Fish Luncheons and Suppers,” the sign read, because the word luncheon is great – and the shop called Sundae Sundae, and the streets were named Harbour Street and Sea Wall and Beach Alley. We wandered by the harbour, where 50 p bought an oyster wet and shiny as an eyeball. Emily bought a single prawn. The Sunday market was out, with handmade cushions on sale, and trinkets, and knick-knacks, and baubles, and gewgaws. There were rainbow-coloured kites and a giant plastic ice cream cone. One man sat at an electric keyboard and hollered “A Groovy Kind of Love” into his mic. It was great.



We shared a jug of Pimm’s at the brewery, and still the sun was hot and glarey, though we could see it was sinking slowly. We shared a bag of crisps, and then another, and we’d been noshing all day and I was ravenous. “There’s this place,” Marc said, “that looks like the kind of place where you could get your head kicked in. But apparently the food is very good.” There was no question, you know, you win some, you lose some. We drove into neighbouring Seasalter, past the sheep grazing in the fields, in the direction of a good head-kicking.

Just around the bend from the telephone pole standing askew in the weeds, the Sportsman was closed for Sunday dinner (there was no mention of head-kickings). The good people at the bar pointed us in the direction of Whistable.



Upstairs at Pearsons Crab and Oyster House, they put us at a large wooden table in the glow of the setting sun. There was chard and roasted garlic soup on the Specials menu. I sat with my back to the sea, on the other side of the table from Marc and Emily. Emily in the light at that time of day was a poster child for a seaside holiday. She had her sunglasses on, and a fringe, and there was a sunflower on the table. She was looking out the window at that very point the sun hits the water. She looked like a champion diver dreaming about taking the plunge.

Well.

So.

I was gone for a while.

I got a job, I lost a job, I moved house, I, well, you’ll see. Last thing I remember, it was June, and I was in New York, closing down the house. That first Saturday morning in June, before I left America again, I double-locked the front door after the cleaners left. I remember that the place smelled like Pine-Sol and paint. I remember that a couple of days before, Tom and I had met, secret-agent style, one walking southwards and one walking north, in Union Square. We looked at each other and looked again, and it was good and familiar though we hadn’t seen each other in a year and a half. We sprawled on the lawn in Union Square, making up a year and a half, and ten o’clock of us a baby chased the pigeons. Fresh from Beirut, with a Penguin paperback in his bum pocket, Tom was telling me about the city later: “You’re in the street and people are yelling ‘IspeakArabicreallyfast! I speakArabicreallyfast!’”

I remember, also, that India threw a party Saturday night and that there was a great, stripey bowl of M&Ms. I sat next to them till I couldn’t anymore. Jeff and Stewart and I hogged the sofas till our yawns were bigger than our heads. The next day I flew back to London.

I remember that I arrived in England feeling good about it for the first time in a long time, and I remember that the sun was out that morning the plane touched down.



It’s been a curious summer, and one whose days have blown by on the wind. It’s been very rainy, and very grey, and very cold: Novemberish. This week, while it was rainy and grey and cold, I sat on the sofa with a relentless cough tight and tickly in my throat. I have been reading Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved. I was swallowed by it, it swallowed me, it was enticing and all-consuming; I read and read and after I got to the last word on the last page I watched the grey drizzle on the grey streets for a while. Then I played David Bowie very loudly and sang along very loudly.



Singing along loudly to Bowie in the middle of the day is one of the great perks of unemployment. Oh, unemployment, how I have come to be familiar with you! Looking for publishing work in London has been like banging my head against a wall for the last two years. The last appointment was at the most dysfunctional of offices, where the boss regularly came in to yell at the number-two but refused to fire her; where the number-two sat at her desk in tears but refused to quit. “Do this,” the boss lady would say, and I’d do it. Two days later, she’d say, “Why’d you do this? You should’ve done that.” Sometimes the contradiction came within a half-day. Sometimes within an hour. Asking for help or direction was as effective as yelling into a deep and empty hole. “Show me how you want this done,” I’d say, and the number-two would tell me, “Just go and do it, and I’ll review it later.” I would later be told how I’d done it wrongly. The worst of it was that I was prepared to stay because I thought I might be able to figure my way around things if I kept my eyes open long enough. I worked eleven- and twelve-hour days and still wasn’t able to keep my eyes open long enough. It was no surprise when one week the boss lady said, “You’re doing just fine” and the next, well, in the morning I texted Olive: “I think I am going to get fired today.” In the afternoon, the number-two slid an envelope across the desk. There were two typos in the letter letting me go.

I am embracing unemployment, what with the singing and dancing to Bowie in the middle of the day, and the languid mid-morning breakfasts with the windows open, rain or no. One morning I fried an egg sunny-side up to go with an avocado, a slice of exquisite treacly pumperknickel, and the leftovers of the weekend newspaper. Another clear day I took the visiting parentals to Ottolenghi for a slap-up breakfast. At nine in the morning, the raspberry meringues were already piled high in the window. The white-clad waitstaff sat us by the toaster of my dreams and brought us a giant bread basket and a flight of spreads. “What’s that?” I said, pointing to one little pot, and the waiter man was pleased to be of assistance. “Orange jam,” he said, “strawberry jam, banana jam, chocolate butter, lemon butter, butter.”

The day after I walked out of the office with freedom in my hair, in my eyes, in my step, I had lunch with Nora on Cleveland Street. “What are you going to do now?” she said. “I think,” I said, “I need to blog.” “You haven’t blogged your whole life,” she said. “Your blog doesn’t know you’re getting married.”



Yah! It is true! You know what else my blog doesn’t know, is that I already am married. Done and done. Do you see me? I am dusting my hands off. The Emily Post website has a step-by-titillating-step timeline for brides- and grooms-to-be, counting down from 24 months before the big day. Don’t make me laugh: ha-ha-ha. June there was the engagement ring, a fuck-off emerald with diamonds dancing on either side. It is the kind of jewellery a girl has to live up to. When I wear it I expect the crowds to part in front of me. I expect coatmen in tails to bow low and call me Contessa. July there was the engagement party at Laureen’s, with a room full of well-wishers, Pimm’s for all, and more cupcakes than people. There was calling the town hall, watching the guest list grow from six to 39, booking a table at the restaurant, buying a dress the colour of champagne, and then, come August, there was the sunniest day all summer, with a sky blue like a perfect backdrop for fifteen cream roses and one for the groom.



Oh, lordy, everyone should get married all the time, it’s true, and the girl who runs from commitment says it with a silly smile and her feet up. “It’s going to be a small thing,” we said, “very small, no big deal,” so they came in from Paris and Berlin, from Singapore and Istanbul, from Kentish Town, from Bayswater, from Woolwich and Hankey Place, from King’s Cross and Angel and Shepherd’s Bush and Dolphin Square. My father arrived from Bangkok four hours before the ceremony. They came, and the boys were in suits and sneakers, and the girls were in dresses and a celebratory hat – “My friend makes them,” Nora had said. “She’s a milliner, and she does hats.” “A millionaire who does hats?” I’d said, “How can I hook up with that lifestyle?” “A milliner,” Nora said, “a milliner.” – and the family from Paris had crossed the Channel with 23 bottles of champagne.



Outside the Islington town hall, we shook the confetti and rice out of our ears, then we took an old-timey step-on-step-off bus to Saint James’s Park. Emily’d made cupcakes and Suz’d made tofu wontons, and Henny’d brought an extra blanket for the green. Maud unpacked her tote to reveal an entire Cantal cheese. We sat in the sun and we sat in the shade. We dragged over stripey deckchairs to loll about while the bubbly flowed. There were mothers and fathers and stepmothers and stepfathers and uncles and aunts and cousins and friends and friends and friends, we spoke English and French and of course we spoke Singlish vaaiiry loudly and when we couldn’t speak we laughed anyway because we were drunk on summer and nothing could touch us.



It was one of those days, you know?, with the canopy of leaves, and the breeze on bare arms, with sandwiches with the crusts cut off. We moistened scraps of paper with champagne to stick to our foreheads for idiot party games. “Am I a man?” Hector said. “Am I still alive?” “Do I blow fire out of my mouth?” Late into the lazy afternoon, the boys napped on the lawn while Maud and I leaned back in our deckchairs. “Shit,” we said, “life is good.”



Some days after the last family member left town, Olive was on the phone with his mum. She must have asked after me, for “La petite?” Olive said. “La petite is making the house look presentable, she buys boxes to organise things in, she decorates, she goes out for lunches with her friends, elle fait des trucs quoi.” “Hey!” I said in the background, but then I couldn’t disagree. It’s true, all of it, I don’t know how it happened but all of a sudden I have become that woman who gets married and quits her job. It could only be better if Olive had been my boss, too, before I stopped work.

Oh, stop, I imagine the work will happen, by and by, but I’m not too fussed about it yet. For the moment, the sun is finally out again. There are zucchini tarts or rosemary-lemon roast chickens for dinner, and banana cake in the morning. Saturdays we go to the market. Sundays we open the windows and listen to the folk band play in the bar downstairs.

Tomorrow morning Marc and Emily and Laureen are coming to pick us up, and we are driving to the beach for a prosecco picnic.

“Whitstable is a cute sea town, with several beaches that appear to all have quite different characters,” Emily e-mailed earlier today. This is gonna be great. There is nothing like a cute sea town with beach characters: tarty Eugenie Letter, who tends bar down at the Whelk and Lobster; Burgerman Bergerman, who sells hot dogs and salty chips; Our Fanny, who wanders up and down the shoreline in search of her lost-at-sea beau; Frank, a fighter crab; and cross-eyed Stephen Xavier, the unfortunately afflicted fisherman who sits on Pier 23 and sings songs his mother once taught him by the fire.