One billion angels come and love her now.

So pretty. You're quite kind. You watched with LE when I ate my chips and waited to watch me finish the last one. I couldn't fathom why. Did you just want to know if I uphold my own eating regimens, are you really fascinated? I couldn't tell. I like you a lot because you're kind and handsome, and shy and confident, and not in the least bitchy. It's the antithesis of you. We were all gossiping about GF and her weight, but you're so kind. You didn't defend. You looked at me and just stated, "aren't they mean?" then you walked away. You never denigrate. You've got your own level and you'll not sink. I like that about you. Your name sounds like bells on a chiffon hem, jangling and musical.

You are apart from people though; like LE, you don't like celebration and you don't go in for the social events. You aren't invited. Have you been? Or are you just not around. I suppose you're not strictly part of our department. I think they don't invite LE because she wouldn't come, or she wouldn't come because they haven't invited her and she doesn't feel welcome; it's chicken or egg. I'd like to invite you to something very much.

I wonder if you were a great beauty? You still are a beauty, but not in the pretty sense; you're more handsome, and you're beautiful because of what's radiating from you- assured calm. So maybe that's always the way you've been, but then you're shot through with shyness as well, not with the young ones but with me and with us. I suppose I'm looking for people like me that don't know exactly where they stand, and that's you in my mind but maybe not in reality. I suppose you were an asset, as a daughter, because you're clever and everything else a woman should be; I wonder what your marriage is like. You're sensible- you don't drag your children off to weddings they don't want to attend, you don't do things you don't like doing (a lot like me). I'd have gone over to sit next to you if I could have, but it seemed to obvious, and I stare a lot anyway. You're another one that doesn't remark on MR's weight loss, which I interpret to have the same meaning as my own silence on the subject; you don't remark because, good or bad, comments have repercussions and they're not always the ones you intend.

I can catch your eye across the staffroom, when everyone else is talking about what they would and wouldn't do to their bodies, or what they are doing to them. We eat silently, and I eat defensively. I chomp away because I want to show I don't care. It's my downfall that I do, but it's all modelling behaviour- if I do it often enough, I eventually won't. I already feel disdain for the attitudes of those on diets. So maybe you were the way I was? It could be labelled an eating disorder, but it's been too easily cured and I think it's just different. EDNOS they might call it, but it's not that either. It was what it was, and I am who I am. So who are you? With your dark wavy hair, always the same style, half up and half back in a barette, and your little stride that always looks as if it's vaguely stumbling (though you don't mock GF, who can't walk from building to building without breaking a sweat and gasping for breath) you manage to keep up with my Gulliver strides. We've got the same feet, short and wide. I can always talk to you and I'm never stuck for things to say, which is odd for me. I'd like to get drunk with you and see what happens.