You Are Here

by David Nicholls

Others were lost to apathy or carelessness, friendship like a thank-you letter she kept meaning to write until too much time had passed and it became an embarrassment.

There is who we want to be, she thought, and there is who we are. As we get older the former gives way to the latter, and maybe this is who I am now, someone better off by themselves. Not happier, but better off. Not an introvert, just an extrovert who had lost the knack.

This was the crux of it. For Cleo, the solution to a problem lay in the presence of other people, while Michael depended on their absence, and while the kindness of a friend was a precious and touching thing, it could also feel like an imposition.

Soon the patter on his hood became a kind of white noise and he found himself approaching a fugue state – was that the phrase? – free from the churn of his thoughts.

The stories we tell about ourselves are never neutral: they’re shaped and structured to create an impression,

For the moment she felt content, not because she’d spoken but because she’d been listened to.