Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

Adam Thorpe

what she was on about. The girl is pretty, she can tell. Frizzy hair shorn short, ear dangling a huge silver ring like a moon. Good healthy skin, maybe half- Jamaican or something. Suzie has skin that she’s stopped blaming Nivea for. It is prone to rashes and sudden patches of red. Right now in the cold weather it looks as if she’s been trying to cheesegrate her cheeks. She is saved by what all the boys tell her is a mouth beyond mouths and green eyes that disturb other people’s relationship goals. And her thick, coppery hair. Oh, and perhaps her body. Well, of course her body. Please distract me from Suzie’s body, the call goes out on Twitter. Jasper told her once, if not twice, that her body was at ease with herself. He

was drawing her nude on the bed. Recumbent life class. ‘Sunlight and water,’ he said, which she’d heard somewhere else, maybe a poem, maybe an advert for soap. She has a sinewy waist which she is scared will fatten like everybody else’s. She is sure, looking down at it now, it is creasing too much at the navel-stud. Muffin tops, almost. Watch what you eat. Only green stuff, like a botanical garden is on my plate. Or better, skip lunch. Drink much less. She has another little jet- black stud in her ear which offsets her redhead’s pale skinandmakesher look, for some reason, slightly waif- like, slightly dangerous. That’s what the mirror in the pub toilets tells her, every time. When it’s not depicting her as a Francis Bacon.

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