More there. I always liked it when Emily mentioned her, because her name sounded like one I’d been familiar with once, a long time ago. Mindy Moo sounded like someone I’d known and liked. Standing at the bus stop after school that afternoon, I thought about something I’d read once in a book at school – a tradition gypsies used to have, when naming their children. They gave them three, in total, the book had said: there was the baby’s official name, and then its family name and then the name whispered into its ear by its mother. That last name was something known only by the mother and – in some subliminal way, I supposed – the baby. There was something nice about that tradition, I’d thought. Names could be like that, though; they could be funny. Also, they could give people a character they didn’t actually have. Stella, for instance, had once sounded like a bright, uncomplicated name to me. Just as Ed had been a salt-of-the-earth name, an honourable name; manly and a good laugh.
