On Camberwell green
Martha.
I’m sorry, that’s s**t, isn’t it? s**t beginning. I didn’t mean for it to sound like a speech I was giving. You would have written it much better, I’m sure. I’ll start again.
It was because you laughed at my name on the first day of school that I wanted you. “Hardly the most auspicious of beginnings”, I know you’d say, dry, eloquent and English. You never told me what was so funny about “Sandy”, but I remember word-for-word what I said to you.
“What? because you think it’s a boys’ name?” I demanded.
“What?” you gasped, through more laughter.
“In Scotland it’s a boys’ name!” I insisted, and of course that just made everything worse for me. As if I hadn’t felt self-conscious enough in my Fettes tartan, being laughed at like that just showed how I’d never fit
