Ever since his schooldays he had developed a real passion for précising.
The teacher would come up with a paragraph that contained a hundred words and would ask the class to précis it, using around a third of the words to do it. He probably enjoyed it more than the rest of the class. This interest in finding text and making it shorter and more precise stayed with him into his working life. Despite the fact that his job didn’t lend itself to practicing his favourite pastime, he found plenty of opportunity to put it to work in the world around him. He found examples on notices that were pinned to the information board in the office, public notices on the train, recipe instructions on food packaging, and even the occasional blurb on the back of a paperback.
In fact, he was in a bookshop doing this very thing, when he met her. She was putting new books on shelves when they got chatting, and the next thing you know they were dating. Although at first she was mildly interested in his desire to reduce the number of words used for just about anything, she didn’t share his interest with any fervour. It was a fact that their communications were mainly carried out with text messages. They in themselves being generally short and sweet suited them both fine although not giving him much in the way of a challenge.
As the days went on they regularly caught up, each time arranged by text. They hadn’t been going out for very long when it happened, but long enough for him to know that she was, surely, the girl of his dreams. It was on their third evening out together. They had been to the cinema and watched a movie they both really enjoyed, then followed up with a meal at a restaurant, where they spent the whole time talking about it.
Finally, he was driving her home when he realised he hadn’t asked her how her day at work had been. On the ten minute drive she told him all about it.
It was when he pointed out that she had used one thousand and twenty three words and he felt sure that he could have done it with less than two hundred, that she went quiet.
When they pulled up at her place he didn’t get a goodnight kiss. Instead, she simply got out and went in. The following day he sent her a text asking if she’d like to catch up for a midday coffee.
The single word, ‘no’, was the last text she ever sent.