Arab Strap
"THE HOLIDAY GIRL."


I'm telling you it's the same girl. She's always there on holidays when you're wee. She never grows and she's everywhere. She was in the lift at the Covent Garden underground last week and she was in Torquay when I was thirteen. She said she was called Tina then and she claimed she was from Germany. I watched her from the balcony as she swam in the pool and tanned herself all day. I'd spy on her from hotel windows when she played tennis with her mum and dad. I would try and impress her with my sensitive side by being unusually affectionate to my wee brother when she passed us in the lobby. There was a royal wedding, I dunno which one. But the hotel was having a fancy do, some sort of celebration thing. She sat at the table she usually sat at, at dinner, just across from ours. It was the first time I'd had a drink in the form of this sort of champagne on ice cocktail affair. Later when there was a dance and all the parents were drunk and her dad tried to make me dance with him in this conga. I wasn't into it, so I went outside and stood on the patio staring at the night sea trying to look deep. She came out and stood beside me, her naked elbow touched mine. She turned 'round and smiled but I couldn't say a thing.