Emma winced at the accolade, then smiled apologetically at the new boy, and he smiled back with his mouth closed tight; a Stan Laurel smile.

—She‘ll show  you the basics, and that‘s it, everyone. Remember!  Fish burritos! Now, music please!‘

Paddy  pressed  play  on  the  greasy  tape  deck  behind  the  bar  and  the  music  began,  a maddening forty-five minutes loop of synthetic mariachi music, beginning aptly enough with ‗La Cucaracha‘, the cockroach, to be heard  twelve times in an eight-hour shift. Twelve times a shift, twenty-four shifts a month, for seven months now. Emma looked down at the baseball cap in her hand. The restaurant logo, a cartoon donkey, peered up at her goggle-eyed from beneath  his  sombrero,  drunk  it  would  seem,  or  insane  perhaps.  She  settled  the  cap  on  her head and slid off the bar stool as if lowering herself into icy water. The new guy was waiting for her, beaming, his fingertips jammed awkwardly into the pockets of his gleaming white jeans, and Emma wondered once again what exactly she was doing with her life.

Emma, Emma, Emma. How are you, Emma? And what are you doing right this second? We’re six hours  ahead  here in  Bombay,  so  hopefully  you’re  still  in  bed  with  a  Sunday  morning  hangover  in which case WAKE UP! IT’S DEXTER!

This letter comes to you from a downtown Bombay hostel with scary mattresses and hot and cold running Australians. My guide book tells me that it has character i.e. rodents but my room also has a little  plastic  picnic  table  by  the  window  and  it’s  raining  like  crazy  outside,  harder  even  than  in Edinburgh. It’s CHUCKING IT DOWN, Em, so loud that I can barely hear the compilation tape you made me which I like a lotincidentally except for that jangly indie stuff because after all I’m not some GIRL.  I’ve  been  trying  to  read  the  books  you  gave  me  at  Easter  too,  though  I  have  to  admit  I’m finding  Howards End  quiteheavy-going. It’s like they’ve been drinking the same cup of tea for two hundred pages, and I keep waiting for someone to pull a knife or an alien invasion or something, but that’s not going to happen is it?