Oliver's day

THEREFORE from Day 27's grip, on Sunday evening Ollie sat at his desk in the box-flat in Tufnell Park and rewrote the Edinburgh bit cold, typing it into the Moleskine in blocky capitals, his thumb catching on the corner of the Moleskine strap and opening a thin cut across the pad of his right thumb that bled a small red comma onto the page beneath the title. The romance: Rae had texted at ten, a single line about the Margaret Drabble he had mentioned, and he replied yes, come to the bookshop Tuesday, and she replied with a single :) that he read four times while plastering his thumb at the kitchen sink. By midnight the Edinburgh bit was tight at seven minutes, the panic attack set at five, and he thought the opener and the closer were, somehow, the same woman — his mum at the wheel — circling. He brushed his teeth, looked at his thumb in the mirror, and decided, by the time the light went off, that he would open the audition with the Edinburgh bit and close it with the panic attack set.