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right? I thought of Okkervil River. I thought of the love songs – the songs of lost love that I’d heard Flynn sing on the night I’d first seen her. They hadn’t been all happiness and light. But I hadn’t wanted to put anything between Flynn and me by pointing this out.
    Now I tossed aside the jellybeans and opened a tin of tomato soup. I changed my bed so that the scent would not remind me of Flynn, when all I wanted to do was to lie down in the dirty sheets and wallow in memories. I washed the sheets at midnight, pegging them on the line in the dark, detesting the artificial smell of lavender from the washing powder.
    In my fresh, forcibly celibate bed, I stayed up and read Notes From Underground . It described a dark underworld of unconscious desires, and the protagonist was scarcely sane, but reading it as I did, at a time when I was ill with desire for Flynn, imprinted it on my mind forever.
    I wanted her! How much I wanted her!
    At last, I dropped the book to the floor and fell asleep with the light still on.
    I finished Notes from Underground next morning over a cup of coffee, and in honour of Dostoyevsky, I dressed entirely in black. I returned the book to the shop, and managed to hand-sell a copy that very day.
    A boy came in, one of those confident, well-balanced looking boys with just the right degree of grunginess to make him look interesting. He scanned through the novels, picking one up, reading the back cover and putting it back again.
    â€˜Can I help you?’ I asked, though my head had started to throb.
    â€˜I’m looking for a book for my sister,’ he said, with a matter-of-fact grimace. ‘Birthday present.’
    â€˜What does she normally read?’
    â€˜Anything … everything … she loves reading.’
    â€˜And, how old is she?’
    â€˜About …’ said the boy, giving me an appreciative glance, ‘… your age.’
    â€˜So, she really reads everything?’
    â€˜Especially the classics,’ he said. He had lively, humorous eyes.
    I gestured with my hands, meaning, which ones ?
    â€˜Oh, you know …’ He thought for a bit. ‘The nineteenth century! Jane Austen, all that.’
    â€˜Does she read the Russian writers? Tolstoy? Dostoyevsky?’
    â€˜ Especially the Russian writers,’ he said, leaning his shoulder against a shelf, and giving me a particularly attentive look.
    He was giving out distinct signals that he found me attractive. If I’d wanted, if I had been that way inclined , I was sure I could flirt back enough for him to ask me out. ‘I’d like to meet your sister,’ I wanted to say, perversely.
    Instead I said, ‘Here’s a book by Dostoyevsky that I’ve only just finished reading. I know the cover makes it look like a contemporary novel, but it was actually written in the 1860S .’
    The boy took the book and looked through it.
    â€˜And it really does read like a modern novel in many ways,’ I told him. ‘The feeling of alienation and disaffection. And it’s full of all sorts of philosophy and ideas – the character’s quite repulsive, of course, but that’s not the point … if your sister has ever read Crime and Punishment she’d like it, because this character is another version of Raskolnikov.’
    â€˜I’ll take it.’
    â€˜You will?’
    â€˜Yep. You’ve sold me on it. And if my sister doesn’t like it, I’ll read it myself. Actually, I think I’ll read it anyway, before I give it to her.’
    We returned to the counter. I glanced up at him as I took his money, and could see that he was about to say something else. And as I handed over the package with a smile, he said, ‘If you’re not doing anything later …’
    But I gave him a regretful look, and declined.
    I felt the pull of Flynn; she was so close, but so far away. I wanted to march up the stairs to her flat, and