Find out about our secrets and our lies, promised the book cover. Open the pages and dive in, open the pages and dive in, open the pages and dive in. Find out about our secrets and our lies, find out about our secrets and our lies, promised the book cover. Well there’s a book and a half, I said to myself. I was sitting at the table next to the lady who was engrossed in reading it. Well, there’s a book and a half, I said to myself again. Who could possibly resist the temptation to dive straight in and become fully immersed in all of those secrets, all of those lies? Who could possibly resist, I asked myself again, feeling positively giddy at the prospect. My head was spinning – all of those secrets, all of those lies! So much temptation – the richest and most succulent of all possible temptations, I realised. My heart was beating faster than usual at the very thought of it. Life’s a funny old thing I thought then, suddenly overcome by nostalgia for a past which I have never had. I felt the prick of tears starting and I had to blink rapidly to keep them back. Life’s a funny old thing, I said to myself again. Find out about the life you never had, I told myself – the life you never could have had, the life you never would have had. It’s all intertwined in a complicated ball of secrets and lies, secrets and lies. Secrets we have no business finding out about, and lies we would be better off not questioning. But I already found out. I had already questioned and I didn’t like the answer. It was now too late to turn back – the ball of secrets was coming undone before my very eyes! It was like a giant ball of twine that had all come unravelled so that now there was no more ball. Only a big unruly mess of twine everywhere. I felt nostalgia for that ball – I experienced a pervasive sense of loss and longing for what it had represented. I realised then that I wanted more than anything else in the world to return to that place, that secret place within me which existed no more. Which never had existed. I was coming undone, I realized. I was visibly unravelling. Find out about our secrets and lies, enticed the book cover. Come and find out – dip in and be surprised. By all those scandalous lies, by all those sordid secrets. But it was no use to me – I wouldn’t be let in. It was too late for me now; all I could do was sit here sipping my flat white, feeling pang after pang of unbearable nostalgia and longing for a past that I had never had, and never would have. There is a secret sadness in me I realised, but it belongs to no one.