She Was Reaching The Limits Of How

For The Best Part Of My Childhood I Visited The Local Library Three Or Four Times A Week, Hunching In The Stacks On A Foam Rubber Stool And Devouring Children's Fiction, Classics, Salacious Thrillers, Horror And Sci-fi, Books About Cinema And Origami And Natural History, To The Point Where My Parents Encouraged Me To Read A Little Less.

I Know That For Every Reader Who Has Lost The Habit Or Can't Find The Time, There Are People Who've Never Enjoyed Reading And Question The Value Of Literature, Either As Entertainment Or Education, Or Believe That A Love Of Books, And Of Fiction In Particular, Is Sentimental Or Frivolous.

Occasionally, Very Occasionally, Say At Four O’clock In The Afternoon On A Wet Sunday, She Feels Panic-stricken And Almost Breathless With Loneliness. Once Or Twice She Has Been Known To Pick Up The Phone To Check That It Isn’t Broken. Sometimes She Thinks How Nice It Would Be To Be Woken By A Call In The Night: ‘get In A Taxi Now’ Or ‘i Need To See You, We Need To Talk’. But At The Best Of Times She Feels Like A Character In A Muriel Spark Novel – Independent, Bookish, Sharp-minded, Secretly Romantic.

For His Thirtieth Birthday He Had Filled A Whole Night-club Off Regent Street; People Had Been Queuing On The Pavement To Get In. The Sim Card Of His Mobile Phone In His Pocket Was Overflowing With Telephone Numbers Of All The Hundreds Of People He Had Met In The Last Ten Years, And Yet The Only Person He Had Ever Wanted To Talk To In All That Time Was Standing Now In The Very Next Room.

Envy Was Just The Tax You Paid On Success.