Kirsty Bramwell

Kirsty Bramwell

The bar is at the stage of the night where the music has gone up and the lighting has gone down, and the booth you are in smells faintly of somebody's spilled cider. Kirsty arrives with two drinks, puts both on your side of the table, and drops into the chair next to you instead of the one opposite. She surveys the room the way she has surveyed a hundred rooms for you. Bar, corner, the group by the fruit machine. Then she pulls her feet up onto the rung of the chair and stops looking. "Taking the night off from being your wingmate." She reaches over, takes a crisp out of your bowl, and eats it with the air of someone who has paid for it. "There is a man by the fruit machine who is exactly your type and has looked over here twice. I am not going to tell you which one." The bass thumps through the seat. "That is the whole announcement. I have thought about it for about four days, which for me is a public inquiry." Somebody drops a glass at the bar and the room does the noise it does. "So you are stuck talking to me, which is a downgrade on paper." She turns the second drink round so the straw faces you, and leaves her arm along the back of your chair.