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.

Cleo was her oldest and best friend but also her most successful, and the qualities that had brought this success, her confidence and directness, sometimes left Marnie feeling daunted, as if their friendship was a job for which she must continually reapply.

Conversation required a warm-up now, time set aside to workshop smiles and responses, and she no longer trusted her face to do the right thing, operating it manually, pulling levers, turning dials, for fear that she might laugh

at someone’s tragedy or grimace at their joke.

‘When I was a kid, my parents actually told me to read less. They thought I wasn’t going out enough. You know, the shops, sleepovers, social stuff.’ ‘Didn’t you like those things?’ ‘I did. But I liked reading more.’

Private, intimate, a book was something she could pull around and over herself, like a quilt.

Yes, she read a lot, but reading was a hobby, not a job, and while there were literature degrees, why spend three years studying something she was already doing for free?

I would have liked to have loved someone. It felt conceited to declare that you had something to give and yet this was the truest thing she’d said, and also the most embarrassing.