Sottopassaggio by Nick Alexander Read Free Book Online Page A

tea.”
    Jenny does want tea, but it turns out that she doesn’t mind talking about the van at all.
    â€œThey’re very difficult to get,” she tells me. “Nick got this one imported specially from Brazil, cost nearly twenty thousand by the time we got our hands on it.”
    I pour the boiling water over the teabags. “Worth it though,” I say. “The ultimate hippy statement.”
    Jenny frowns. “I don’t think that any twenty thousand pound car can be called a hippy statement,” she says. “But we looked at all the new ones, and they’re all like ice cream vans, or disabled buses.”
    â€œWell,” I say, handing her the tea. “You’re definitely more Miss Hippy than Mr Whippy.”
    She glares at me. “Mark,” she says. “It’s
so
not a hippy van.”
    I raise my palms in submission. “OK. Just joking.”
    â€œYes, well don’t.” She says this without apparent irony.
    As we sit and chat I realise that the last fifteen years have changed Jenny more than I would have thought possible. Or they have changed me so much I don’t recognise her anymore.
    In my memories, she was a witty, sarcastic, happy-go lucky kind of girl; a pot-smoking, hard-drinking, man-chasing wench. But I wonder if my memories are accurate. I wonder if I haven’t somehow mixed Jenny up with a whole era of youth, a whole era of fun. Maybe none of us are those people now, maybe it’s just the mind playing tricks on the past and we never really were.
    I wonder when she will ask me why I am back in the UK, and I wonder how I will answer, what I will actually tell her. For the moment she is far too busy telling me about her house.
    â€œNick wanted a fitted
Smallbone
kitchen,” she says. “He just didn’t want to settle for anything less.”
    I have no idea what a
Smallbone
kitchen is, but I nod appreciatively.
    â€œSo we had the whole bottom floor gutted before we moved in. I just couldn’t live in a building site. I’m too old for that stuff.”
    My mind drifts, and I find myself nodding fraudulently as I compare different aspects of old Jenny and new Jenny – the fun, irreverent Jenny of my youth, and this strange Surrey advertising rep.
    â€œSmeg,” she says, leaning towards me. “You know
Smeg
?”
    I snap back into the room. “Smug?” I ask.
    â€œNo
Smeg
!” she laughs. “It’s a brand. Kitchen appliances. Anyway, whatever, it doesn’t matter. They’re very good and
very
expensive. But we thought, well, you only buy this stuff once, don’t you …”
    I try to remember a rude word lurking in my mind that sounds like
Smeg
but for the moment it escapes me.
    â€œSo the oven and the fridge, washing machine, well, it’s all
Smeg
,” she is saying.
    I think about it and decide that I have never heard of
Smeg
. “
Maybe they don’t have Smeg in Fra
nce,” I think.
    But I know smug. Smug is universal.
    After an hour or so of uninspiring conversation we head out for a stroll along the seafront. I’ve been feeling bored and irritable but the wind and the sun blow the feeling away and I consciously decide to re-connect with my old friend.
    â€œSo do they still call you Jenny Snog?” I interrupt her. “Or is that all over now you’re married.”
    Jenny freezes, and then laughs falsely.
    â€œJenny Snog?” she says. “Gosh, I’d forgotten that completely!”
    I nod.
    â€œYes you used to call me that!” she laughs. “God knows why.”
    I grin. “I know exactly why,” I say, deciding to push her, to force her to remember who she used to be. “It’s not exactly complicated,” I add.
    But Jenny now wants to talk about me, snapping a lid on the past.
    â€œSo why are you back in England anyway?” sheasks. “Don’t tell me you got sick of the Côte d’Azur!”
    I