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There are summer girls, and there are winter girls. As I dragged listlessly on my cancerous pleasure I watched them walking past. The sun showed them up like bodily fluids under a UV light, exposing the pale, hanging flesh of girls who I’d expected not a few weeks ago to be gorgeous under those swathes of tasteful fabric. Unfortunate.
I liked to think I was a girl of all seasons. I liked to think.
The blue smoke curled idly in the sun rays, spitting through the antiqued golden warmth like a fresh idea. Where was he? I checked my phone. Still time. I smiled happily at the thought that everyone here was connected to me, that we were all enjoying the sun in the way only English people really do, together. The woman walking past with the pet cage filled with ragtag papers was my mother, the boy jumping from fence to fence in an attempt to impress his friends my brother, or maybe my son. Everyone had bloomed in the heat and light. As he walked up to my table outside the little central cafe I saw that his face had bloomed too; brown skin and white teeth and tinges of rose on his nose and cheeks, summer skin.
I grinned like a loon.
