Clifford Thurlow

Everyone moves around the Dôme as if they're at a party except the girl with the pushchair at the table by the door. She sits there studying her fingernails wishing she were somewhere else. She doesn't want to be any trouble. She balances a cube of sugar in the froth on her cappuccino and rocks the pushchair. Tara's murmurs tell her she's ready to eat again. The waiters never look at her. They're too busy looking at themselves in the long mirrors. The paintings on the walls are odd shapes of muddy colours that make strange ugly faces and there are blackboards headed: Menu Prix Fixe. She comes most afternoons, orders her coffee and makes it last until it's cold. She watches the Giants and imagines they are watching her from behind the mineral water they drink with slices of lemon, spending hours rattling the ice around empty glasses, giggling and kissing as they come and go, all interchangeable, and she couldn't work out why there was so much kissing, especially among girls. Her name is Sharon Brown. She imagines her name contained the message that before her seventeenth birthday she would have a baby that was dark honey in colour, not pink like her, nor black like Royston.