WANDERLUST

He saw her first - no he didn’t: he beheld her first - in the library of St Ursula’s College, a grammar school in North Manchester which had agreed to let him research its holdings of once venerated textbooks.   Her head appeared above the stacks like that of a browsing giraffe.  She even swivelled her jaw as though chewing on an acacia leaf. That was a tic he would come to hate – as for example when it accompanied a confession that she loved another man, or another woman, or both - but at first it beguiled him.  It suggested the absent-mindedness of a person who was always somewhere else.  She caught his gaze and smiled at him.  Yes, I am, aren't I, her look implied. . .

So begins - for paid subscribers - a novel I started two or three years ago and have just returned to. If you would like to read on but are not a paid subscriber, you can of course become one….