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“Here you are,” MindReader says, handing me the giant Lush bag.

“Ooh thank you,” I say SITTING UP.

“I have to say, it was ridiculous,” he says, as I pull out a creamy candy bath melt and sniff it delightedly.

“Hmm?”

“The price,” he says, and I feel a blush creeping over my cheeks. Somehow, when we live together (that is, September or whenever my glands get their act together, whichever is the later) I think we may argue about money.

“I mean, a bottle of Radox is a quid and lasts ten baths,” he says, ruffling my hair with a smile.

“Radox,” I say, abhorred, “is rubbish.”

I sniff a coconut-scented shampoo bar. “The worst thing about being ill,” I say, which is a sentence I say a lot, “is that you can’t have secrets, since everyone has to do stuff for you.”

“Perhaps,” MindReader says, touching my nose, “you shouldn’t have to keep your bath products a secret?”

“Okay I’ve bought it all,” MindReader says to me. He has been to Lush for me, and although it doesn’t make up for the fact that I can’t go crossing roads in the sunshine and catching trains and smelling how the shop smells, it does mean I can have rather nice baths.

“Thanks,” I say. “How was the law today?” For this is what I do.

“Fine,” he says, “litigation for fatal accidents, fun.”

“Ah,” I say. “Is it cheaper to kill, then?”

He pauses for a moment and I hear the door of the shop swing shut. “It depends,” he says. “It’s cheaper to kill if they’re single and don’t have dependents.”

“Ah.”

“I wonder what people walking past me think of me?”

“Hello,” I say into the phone. “How was the law today?”

“Boring,” MindReader says. “Two youths stole a mobile phone.” I can almost hear him rolling his eyes. “Allegedly. How are you feeling?”

“Crap,” I say.

“What kind of crap?” He says, yawning.

“Just dizzy, I hadn’t really done much but I went to find a jumper to wear out to reflexology and just got so dizzy.”

“Oh dear,” he says, and he yawns again.

“Am I boring you?” I say.

“No no,” he says, “I’ve got phone yawns.”

I laugh. “How did you get those?”

“Don’t know,” he says. “There’s no explanation and no cure.”

“Oh really?”

“Yep,” he says. “I worry I might have them for ten years.”

“Probably best not to worry about -” I catch myself. “I see,” I say.

“Good!”

“Everything happens for a reason,” LondonFriend says on the phone. “You’ll look back on this very differently soon.”

Sometimes I wonder if it has happened because of something I’ve done.

Because of all the pain I caused Mike, by meeting the love of my life whilst I was still walking home to our house and telling Mike all about my day, omitting details of how MindReader’s ice-blue eyes caught me off guard, piercing me until I felt there were shattered pieces of my obvious heart all over the campus lawn.

Or was it because of my youth, surrounded by music at festivals, mud between my toes, sitting on the shoulders of some stranger, beer dripping in my hair? Or, at university, early mornings spent in dingy clubs, drinking dirty vodka and hailing taxis, barefoot?

Or was it because of my luck? My ability to memorise an entire page of writing in 2 minutes, or the way my skin goes golden brown in the summer? Or was it because of the happiness I found with MindReader, that has to be levelled by an unhappiness that’s as intense?

Or was it because I wasn’t sympathetic enough, when I saw people in wheelchairs, or for all the people I didn’t see, who were in hospitals, housebound?

“I think,” I say slowly, “that crap happens to everybody for absolutely no reason.”

“Maybe that was the lesson you were supposed to learn.”