It’s summer and I’m reading Jennifer Down’s Bodies of Light while at the beach with friends. We eat sandwiches and do quizzes from the newspaper. I think about whether the book matches my Speedos and painted nails. The text is in the foreground of a selfie I take that I will later send to a man I’ve been chatting to. He will ignore me the day we’re finally supposed to meet.

For some reason, I have wholly internalised that books are a must-have beach-side accessory. It’s here that I am showing that I am the kind of person who wears revealing bathers and goes to the beach in summer and has friends and reads even though the sun and the conversation do not permit any reading to actually happen. Bodies of Light blocks the harsh sun from my face and communicates to passers-by that I am a beach person and also a book person. Because both are half-true, but I need them to think they’re full-true.