The ABCs of Love by Sarah Salway Page B

something important. Women spend all this time and money on finding Mr. Right. What they don’t realize is that men are there all the time, lurking in the aisles of DIY shops. All you have to do is buy wire cutters.
    I think I am finally coming to understand the secrets between men and women. John was feeling around my face with his fingertips the other night. He traced the outline of my nose, pressing the end with his thumb. He told me that his mother used to do this when he was a little boy so he would have a round nose like hers and not his father’s beak.
    He then rested all his fingertips over my upper lip. “I love your mustache,” he said. I felt myself go tense, especially when he leaned forward and dolloped out little butterfly kisses all over my face. Was he joking?
    I pushed him away. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He really couldn’t understand.
    “I haven’t got a mustache,” I said. “Men have mustaches, not women.”
    “But you’ve got such a wonderful one,” John said. “It’s beautiful. You’ve no idea how it turns me on. I wish you wouldn’t pluck out the hairs like you always do.”
    I couldn’t believe it. I have spent so many years trying to hide the fact that I have facial hair, and here was someone telling me it was sexy. My stomach turned over with love for John. If only men would realize that this is all women need. To be desired without boundaries, to be loved for all the things we have got wrong with us, not for what we would like to be.
    See also Hair; Vacuuming; Women’s Laughter
    mystery tours
    My father was brought up in a cathedral city, and when he used to take Mum off for their little holidays, I would stay with my grandparents there. In the cathedral, there was an effigy of a dead body that had been carved after the body was buried and dug up. It had worms coming out from its skull. My grandmother would always take me to see it and then leave me there while she went shopping.
    As another special treat, we would go to the department store where there was a cage of stuffed birds. If you put a penny in, they would come to life and sing to you. I got told off once for hitting a small boy who just stood by, watching the birds sing, while I used up all my pocket money. Maybe, my grandmother said afterward, he didn’t have any money and that was his only chance of happiness. “Don’t you feel guilty because you have so much?” she asked me.
    I thought about this a lot, and even though I didn’t have any dessert that day, I was still glad I hit him.
    Once she took me on a mystery tour. We had to get on a coach in the town center first thing in the morning, and we didn’t have a clue where we were going. The coach was full of old people, and my grandmother kept telling me how exciting it was. We went down so many bumpy roads, I started to feel sick, but we drove and drove and drove until we came to a pub and the coach driver got out and had a drink. My grandmother bought me a warm lemonade and some crisps, and then when I went to the loo, a wasp drowned in my lemonade. I couldn’t have another because it was time to drive back home. When I called my parents that evening, my grandmother shouted to me that I should tell them what fun we had. So I did.
    For years afterward, everyone kept telling me how much I enjoyed mystery tours until I nearly believed them.
    See also Dreams; Jealousy; Kisses; Underwear

N
    names
    My father told me that when he was growing up, there was a family on his road who called their sons by the days of the week and their daughters by the months of the year. They only reached June with the girls, but the boys went right through the week. My father’s particular friend was called Saturday Smith.
    We used to talk about names a lot in our family. That’s what made me realize how much they matter. Once my father hit the dining-room table with the flat of his hand because he’d got into a blind rage about why someone would call their child James James.