On Stephanie‘s advice Emma had written letters to publishers, to agents, then to bookshops, but nothing. There was a recession on and people were clinging to their jobs with grim determination. She thought about taking refuge in education, but the government had ended student grants, and there was no way she could afford the fees. There was voluntary work, for Amnesty International perhaps, but rent and  travel  ate  up  all  her  money,  Loco  Caliente  ate  up  all  her  time  and  energy.  She  had  a fanciful notion that she might read novels aloud to blind people, but was this an actual job, or just something that she‘d seen in a film? When she had the energy, she would find out . For now she would sit at the table and glare at her lunch.

The  industrial  cheese  had  set  solid  like  plastic,  and  in  sudden  disgust  Emma  pushed  it away and reached into her bag, pulling out an expensive new black leather notebook with a stubby fountain pen clipped to the cover. Turning to a fresh new page of creamy white paper, she quickly began to write.

Nachos

It was the nachos that did it.

The steaming variegated mess like the mess of her life Summing up all that was wrong

With

Her

Life.

‘Time for change’ comes the voice from the street.

Outside on the Kentish Town Road

There is laughter

But here, in the smoky attic room

There are only

The Nachos.

Cheese, like life, has become 

Hard and

Cold

Like PlasticPlastic

And there is no laughter in the high room.

Emma stopped writing, then looked away and stared at the ceiling, as if giving someone a chance to hide. She looked back at the page in the hope of being surprised by the brilliance of what was there.

She shuddered and gave a long groan, then laughed, shaking her head as she methodically scratched out each line, crosshatching on top of this until each word was obliterated. Soon there was so much ink that it had soaked through the paper. She turned back a page to where the blots had seeped through and glanced at what was written there.Edinburgh morning, 4 a.m.

We lie in the single bed and talk about the Future, make our guesses and as he speaks I look at him, think