The summer air felt sweet against her clammy skin. Usually after work on these warm summer days Melody craved lager or chilled white wine, but today she had a sudden urge for a glass of lemonade. She stopped at a café on Sicilian Avenue, took a table on the pavement and ordered one. It arrived in a tall condensation-coated glass with a yellow bendy straw and a crescent of lemon floating on the top. She stared at it for a while before bringing it to her lips and as she stared another picture appeared in her head. A Formica-topped table, a salmon-pink banquette, a rain-splattered crash helmet, a glass of lemonade and a huge glass globe of ice cream; three mounds of vanilla, a squirt of strawberry sauce, hundreds and thousands, a fan-shaped wafer, a long spoon and a man’s voice saying: ‘Regrets are worse than any mistake you could ever make. Far, far worse.’ And then a smaller voice, a girl’s voice: ‘Will I still be here? In Broadstairs?’ ‘Oh, I doubt that very much. Nobody should stay in Broadstairs for ever.’ And then the vignette disappeared and a name flashed through her thoughts.
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