Dream...

Sometimes on my walk to the gym, along the grass verges, I think about being the sort of person who lives by routine. Meals planned. A chest freezer. A garage with an overspill of soft drinks, just in case someone decides to pop by.

Other times I want to be a city dweller who lives in one room with a plinth bed, goes out every night for culture, classes and people. Busy all the time, with a full diary, barely home long enough to cook.

But the one I love most is the little flat high up in a converted house that I own, overlooking trees in a park. Everything has its place. It is all the women from the Virago and Persephone books I’ve read, living alone, eating frugally, walking through the park on their way home from errands. Think kitchen sink novel, with piles of books, rugs and piles of books. It is lonely, perhaps, but cosy and predictable, where I work an ordinary job forever and ever.

I have so many more. I can conjure an apartment in an Italian hill town, or a little house in a Greek village where I live alone and write. Sometimes it’s West London. Sometimes Hastings. Sometimes Lewes.

Each place comes with a different version of me.

So many possible lives live safely in my head, ready to be called upon at any time. They comfort me. They offer safety. They remind me that anything is possible.

But sometimes I wonder whether, eventually, we’re meant to choose one. And how do you do that?

I even watch people on the bus and wonder how they live. What their rooms look like. What they eat. How they spend their evenings. What brings them comfort.

Sometimes I think it’s because life remains such a mystery. Other times I think it’s the same impulse that made me dream, as a child, of living on the ceiling, where everything felt clear and empty. Perhaps all these different homes and different selves aren’t plans at all. They’re places to rest for a while when life becomes too much.