I was meeting a girl for a business-related matter in a café. Suddenly, her mobile phone rang. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where is it?’ And she plunged her hand into her bag.

The bag was large and made of leather. The girl rummaged through its depths while the phone kept ringing:

‘Where the hell is it?’ Then she took a daring step. She turned the bag upside down and dumped everything onto the table.

Out fell three lipsticks, a heavy bottle of perfume, tangled earphones, and cotton pads in a cellophane sleeve

There was green mascara, a postcard with a view of Bali, an unopened pack of flavored condoms, and a large hairbrush.

No, that wasn’t all. The lady continued shaking the bag. Out came yesterday’s ticket to a melodrama at a cinema, and a book titled How to Eat Strudels and Keep Your Figure

There were chopsticks from a Japanese restaurant, a packet of wet wipes, half a chocolate bar, a MacBook, pink sunglasses, a blue umbrella, black patent-leather shoes… And finally, the long-awaited phone.

Before me on the table lay an entire girlish universe. I was enchanted.

In truth, a woman is her handbag. Everything inside the bag is her: her cares, her anxieties, her dreams.

From a single sad cinema ticket, one could already write the heroine’s character.

She went in the evening, even without a friend, but to a trendy cinema. That means she’s searching for someone in the dark and still cannot find him. The pretty pack of condoms remains untouched.

I could make a TV show called The Handbag. Various celebrities would hand over their bags anonymously; expert viewers would examine the contents and describe the owner.

Meanwhile, she would sit in a secret room, anxiously listening to how she was being exposed. ‘Oh, am I really like that? Well, yes, I suppose I am.

And in the finale, she would make a dramatic appearance in the studio to thunderous applause.

A handbag is far more accurate than a horoscope. Better than any psychoanalysis. Stars lie, psychologists are charlatans, but a handbag will tell the whole truth.

It’s probably a good thing a handbag can’t speak; they would tell such stories about their owners. That’s why a handbag is a girl’s best friend. The closest, the most loyal, the most sensitive.

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A BOOK AT BEDTIME. A NEW GENERATION OF ROMANTIC NOVELS is by Michael Walsh, the magical weaver of romantic dreams. THE ENIGMA OF TIFFANY, SOUL MATES and THE DOVETAILS HOTEL. https://michaelwalshbooks.wordpress.com/