There but for The Read Online Free PDF Page B

joke between her and Douglas, at the exact same moment as she thought of it.
    He starts whistling something else. It’s the Abba song about I have a dream. He doesn’t look the Abba type.
    He sings the lines about how if you see the wonder of a fairytale you’ll be fine in the future. He has a quite good voice. He’s singing quite loud, loud enough for her to be able to hear him clearly. In fact it’s almost as if he’s singing for her.
    Then, next, does he really sing this?
    I believe in Engels.
    That’s unbelievably witty, if that’s what he’s just sung and she hasn’t misheard. That’s the kind of thing only a really good friend of hers would have known to do to get her attention.
    Then the boy speaks, and it is to her.
    Come on, he says.
    He seems to want her to sing.
    She gives him her most withering look.
    You’re joking, she says.
    I only joke about really serious things, he says. Come on. Something good in everything you see.
    Don’t know it, she says.
    You do, he says.
    I don’t, actually, she says.
    You do, actually, he says, because Abba songs, as anyone who knows knows, are constructed, technically and harmonically, so as to physically imprint the human brain as if biting it with acid, to ensure we will never, ever, ever, be able to forget them. In twenty years’ time Abba songs will still be being sung, probably even more than they’re being sung now.
    Is that what you wrote your Britain in the year 2000 thing about, then? she says. The Generation Maimed In The Brain By Abba?
    Maybe, he says.
    No way, she says.
    What was yours, then? he says.
    I asked first, she says.
    Here’s how mine starts, he says. There was once a girl in a dated-looking punk T-shirt—
    It is not dated-looking! Anna says.
    —sitting by the side of the water at a French historical palace—
    Very funny, Anna says.
    She was very funny, he says. Or was she? Nobody knew, nobody ever found out, because she was so determined to keep herself to herself. If only she’d joined in with the Abba song Miles was singing by the water at Versailles that day, then everything would have been, as if by magic, all right. Unfortunately, something stubborn, which had taken hold in her constitution at a very early age—
    I’m not stubborn, she says.
    Unfortunately, something supercilious, which had taken hold in her constitution—, he says.
    I’m not that either, she says, whatever it is. There’s just no way I’m going to be caught dead singing Abba.
    I’d never sing Abba, he says. I’m not singing Abba, I’m singing revolution. Unfortunately, something conservative, small c and big C, had taken hold in—
    I am no way either of those, she says. And your story’s completely pathetic. I’m actually not joining in because I actually don’t know the words of it.
    Making them actually up myself actually, he says. Anyway actually it’s you who started with the actual Eurovision pop, not actually me. There was once a girl twenty years in the future who was totally unable to communicate except by rolling her eyes and saying only the word actually. There. Now. You tell me the first line of your story.
    You tell me the real first line of yours first, she says.
    He has moved to sit closer to her.
    What’s your name? he says.
    Anna, she says.
    Your name is almost Abba, he says.
    This makes her nearly laugh out loud.
    There was once, and there was only once, he says. Once was all there was.
    That’s your beginning? she says. Really?
    He looks away.
    That’s quite good, she says.
    Thanks, he says.
    Except, you say there was once and there was only once, and then with that next line you say it again, so you end up saying the word once three times, which means once doesn’t end up meaning once at all, she says.
    There was once a girl who was too critical for words, he says. Or maybe just critical enough for words. What’s your beginning, then, critic?
    The future’s a foreign country. They do things differently there, she says.
    Yeah, I