The ABCs of Love by Sarah Salway Read Free Book Online

care about them. She says she wants to live on her own and doesn’t want to be beholden to anyone. She wants no possessions, no ties, no responsibilities. She says this is her ambition. But you can really leave things behind only if you have them in the first place—a family, a relationship, opinions. Otherwise, you’re not even running away. You’re merely existing somewhere, anywhere, else.
    Still, the good thing is that I am not at all jealous of Sally. We each bring our own attributes to the relationship that are mutually beneficial. I am completely happy with my own life. I wish Sally well in hers.
    Sally and I are friends. No, no, no. I am not jealous of Sally. I am especially not jealous of Sally’s relationship with Colin.
    See also Zzzz
    john
    I can’t wait to tell Sally.
    The most amazing thing has happened.
    I have fallen in love. I feel glowing. I feel fantastic. I have just walked down the street, and everybody smiled at me. Men whistled at me. I feel like a goddess. I look down at my arms, and my skin looks as if it has been sprinkled with diamond dust.
    Everybody is so much nicer, funnier, prettier. And so am I.
    His name is John.

K
    kate
    John has a wife. Sally told me first. Well, she didn’t know exactly, but what she said was: “If he e-mails you from work, he is married. If it is always him who has to call you, he has children. If he doesn’t have any hobbies, it is because he has a family life, not no life.”
    I asked John about it but he was going to tell me anyway. Right after we talked about it, he asked me to tell him a joke, so I believe him when he says being married isn’t a problem.
    “Two parrots were on a perch,” I said. “One said to the other ‘Can you smell fish?’ ”
    Sally told me this joke. It makes everyone laugh, but I don’t really understand it. I think it might be surrealist. When I asked John if this was so, he told me that I was funny and that he loved me. He couldn’t tell me why that should surprise him so.
    John’s wife’s name is Kate. I don’t like the way they’re next to each other in the alphabet. My name is Verity, so I’m right at the end, out of the way.
    He doesn’t love her. He never has. They are together just for the sake of the children.
    See also Women’s Laughter
    kindness
    I want to go round the world carrying out random acts of kindness. I want to buy extravagant foods and leave them on pensioners’ doorsteps. I want to get up on a snowy day and wipe the windshields of every car in the street. I want to entertain small children so their mothers can sleep. I want to take every homeless person to the Ritz for a night. I want to hire the Bolshoi Ballet and put on performances in Trafalgar Square so commuters can be inspired on their way to work. I want to stand on street corners and wait for blind men to come along so I can lead them across the street. I want to tape the wings of injured birds with lollipops and Band-Aids. I want to distribute food to orphans, take guns off soldiers, rid the world of nuclear threats.
    I want everyone to feel as happy as I do. I am so fucking happy, I think I’m going to explode.
    See also Grief; Imposter Syndrome; Nostrils
    kisses
    I’ve taught John to do that twiddly thing with his tongue that the Australian did. He should be in one of those kissing booths at village fetes. I am sure there are many, many people who would pay to be kissed like that.
    The funny thing is, I sold my first kisses for money. My mother would slip me cash for kissing my grandmother whenever we went to visit her. I would have done it for free, but I pretended I didn’t like touching her prickly, hairy, old-lady cheeks because it seemed to give my mother pleasure. In fact, I wanted to rub my skin against my grandmother’s forever. She smelled of lavender and dried rosebuds and those thin tubes of Parma Violet sweets. Very different from my mother, who had a tinny, chemical smell that stung you when you got too close.
    When my