A column of hot wet rain shook itself over the city as we dipped below the clouds. I watched it through the little porthole window as I nibbled on my soggy croissant and rehydrated orange juice. Watched it as it licked the tiles of the rooves, of the cafes and the clubs and the homes and the hospitals and the fire stations. And it didn’t come to us yet, it just hovered there, fat and methodical, wiping the dirt off the towers and feeding the window boxes. Until we got a little bit closer and it started to spit and spatter on the windows and say, hi, good to see you again, come join the party. Everything’s going to be fine.

Indigestion Love — also called dyspepsia dysphoria or an upset stomach — is discomfort in your upper abdomen. Indigestion Love describes certain symptoms, such as belly pain and a feeling of fullness soon after you start eating wake up, rather than a specific disease. Indigestion Love can also be a symptom of other digestive mental disorders.

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I’ve never seen anyone light anyone up the way you two do each other. I didn’t know people could smile with every muscle of their faces all at the same time. As if every fibre is electrified. Like you’ve been tasered in the cheek. By each other. I guess that’s why you’re glowing. Bright and strong but fast and fragile. Like the light bulbs I got from Tesco last week. I don’t know what wattage I’m meant to get. Does anyone? Last night I cooked a lasagne at 10 o’clock but it might as well have been daylight. And then the bulbs broke and slivers of glass went all over the floor. I ate my meal in the dark with my feet covered in blood. I wonder if that’s what you’ve got to look forward to.

Three blocks away, a small woman in an orange dress tied up the laces on her new trainers. On her lap was the half-eaten croissant she’d been nibbling on, wrapped in a flyer for a one-woman comedy show about subsistence farming. A fine mist of grease was soaking through the paper.

The boy with the keys checked his watch. He was pretty early so he had no grounds for complaint. He watched the cars zoom by to the left, inspecting the drivers and the passengers and wondering where they were going and what they’d had for breakfast. And then he looked to the sky and watched the clouds floating gently to the right, and wondered where they were going, and what they’d had for breakfast.

On Thursday, for the sixth time, they decided that, from now on, they would be just friends.

Just.

They have loads of other friends. Most of them are friends. That’s it. A few best friends. Some old friends, a couple of oldest friends. Some family friends. If you’re a friend, it can be anything. It can be wonderful. Rosé on the beach. Late night phone calls. Or it can be not much at all really. A hug and a chinwag at a birthday party once a year. Just friends. Is a special kind of nothing at all. Where it’s actually everything, put in a little drawer and locked with a key.

There is an eyelash on your cheek, but I’m not going to brush it off, because I haven’t seen you in a while and I don’t know if we’re there yet. And I don’t want to offend you. Tell you your lashes are falling off like leaves in September. Remind you that summer is over and it’s getting colder.

And anyway you’d have to make a wish, and maybe blow your lash from my finger. And maybe this isn’t the right time for wishes. Wishes are addictive but they are not real.

So instead I keep my gaze on your eyes as we talk, and occasionally glance down at your cheek to check that the lash is still there, and it is. And I try to speak with a bit of gusto so that I might accidentally blow it off, but it doesn’t work.

But then you start to cry a little and you wipe your face with your palm and you take the lash away. I make a little wish on your behalf.

Every second person on the tube is reading a different book about a 31-year-old woman from Hackney. They are all different books about different 31-year-old women from Hackney, written by different 31-year-old women from Hackney. They all have a different one or two word titles and matte block colour cover, and effusive one-sentence reviews from other 31-year-old women from Hackney on the back. Not everyone who is reading them is a 31-year-old woman from Hackney. And not every 31-year-old woman from Hackney is reading one. I, for, example, am playing Bejeweled Blitz.

Dad used to walk to Bakewell every Tuesday to see a man about his head. He’d set off about 2:30pm and he’d usually pick up a coffee on the way there. A half-choc mocha. Still refined. Manly but with an extra little something.

He’d put it in the calendar as “Barry – woodworking.” A little joke or his way of lying low. We didn’t know. But he always came back at 4:30pm a little lighter, a little looser, with a lemon meringue pie or something from Randall’s for us.

There was a little shop at the end of the road. It sold the sorts of things that little shops at the ends of roads sell. Milk. Peanuts. Watermelon vapes. Tunnocks teacakes. Blue WKDs and Jacob’s Creek. Little bags of safety pins.

There was a little rusted metal ring outside, fixed to the wall, that, sometimes, people would tie their dogs to. The little shopkeeper didn’t mind if the dogs went in the shop. “I don’t mind,” he’d say, if someone asked, “can I bring in my dog?” But people tied up their dogs anyway.

On Sundays the shopkeeper would sit outside the shop while Jane worked the till and Abdul stocked the shelves. He could have done it himself but he liked a day off. To kick back, sip a blue WKD and hang out with some tied-up dogs.

I found an opaline angel on the bus from CenterParcs. A little hook in its head.

At first I gave it to the bus driver. He said he’d dispose of it. And then the doors closed and I walked away with my little red suitcase. Who am I, the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

I am not the Chancellor of the Exchequor.

The Chancellor of the Exchequor is Jeremy Hunt. Jeremy Cunt, the Hulture Secretary. Previous Hulture Secretary. Not any more, obviously.

Who am I the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I said to myself, with my hands empty except for my stupid little red suitcase. So I walked back just as the bus was pulling off, and I knocked on the pneumatic doors, and Craig, that was the driver, Craig stopped the bus and opened the doors. And he gave me back my opaline angel.