Main character in a romance I never wrote

1: She’s the girl in the second hand bookshop, looking for old books with inscriptions in them. She never buys the books.

2: She likes to sit by the sea counting the number of people who went past her holding hands. When there are fewer people she feels more comfortable with her place in the world.

3: She likes to leave hand-written notes in unexpected places (the refrigerator/the bread box). She’s charming.

4: Her clothes are never ironed.

5: She’s likely to lend you her umbrella, her clip, a safety pin, fifteen rupees, or a Digene. But she’ll expect you to return it.

6: Occasionally she’s a bitch. And this side of her is preferable to her sanctimonious side.

7: She had a deliciously torrid affair with a married man but ended things after she spotted his wife at Nature’s Basket checking apples for freshness.

8: She’s kind to old people, abandoned cats and little girls who remind her of herself.

9: She’s not perfect — I mean her nose is…could have been…well, it’s not a bad nose. It’s a nose that has character.

10: She wakes up less pretty than the night before but something about her clean skin and sleep-heavy eyes make the lack of prettiness an intimate morning secret that one learns to cherish.

11: Her sense of humour is either morbid or non-existent and there is no in-between.

12: Her father has been tainted by a scandal. Her mother has raised her alone.

13: She remembers things in frightening detail.

14: And yet she’s a pathological liar. Occasionally she worries that she’s more like her father than her mother.

15: She listens deeply, reasonably, unselfishly, nodding vehemently, smiling at the right places, waiting for even the longest wound sentences to reach their complete end.

16: She has nice eyes.

17: She’s currently being cat-fished.