Michelle is taking vicious swipes at my bob. It's coming off, you see, for summer. Gold chains sway over her Corfu-tanned cleavage, her fuchsia nails clench her scissors, her lips are pursed in concentration. She is doing this in my bathroom, but we do not know each other: she lives down my street and offered her services the other day.
Eventually, she says: "You going on your summer holidays, then?"
Since she's asking, I tell her. "No I'm not. It's August - I'm staying home."
Michelle glances at me in the mirror, the sort of glance you might give a nun in a whorehouse. What a weirdo, she thinks. Fancy no summer holiday! I 'fess up - I'm a city girl. Yes, yes, I drink vodka, keep a cat, ravage men and fight chocolate urges - all that. I marvel at Top Shop ("Tow Show" to those in the know), I have 15 different types of aromatherapy massage oil in my bathroom cupboard (which never get used), a very long telephone bill and a penchant for facials. But also ... I don't want to go away for a summer holiday.
I like the city too much at this time of year. Make all the assumptions you like about Mediterranean romances after copious bottles of wine, but me, I prefer to stay home in the summer. Why exactly shouldn't I, when the rest of this country's rain-soaked months are enough to drive you out, when September to July provide weeks of potential escapism, hundreds of days to take refuge from the monotonous drizzle that dominates our skyline?
August, though. August is different. Nights are hot, balmy, sticky; but in the city they are also cool, breezy, edgy. In the country you hear birds, water, crickets, breeze. In the city you hear beats, conversation, the fizz of cans opening, shouts from garden patios, laughter with a stranger. Yes! Spontaneous human contact!
August is the one month when London is actually worth living in, when Mr and Mrs Volvo have gone to their country pad, the bourgeoisie have fled to Tuscany and the politicians are back in their constituencies. And left behind, playing down my street - my sweet, north London, pastel-fronted street, with its limestone flagging and punctuated trees - are my neighbours, the people I live among but only actually know for one month of the year.
August is when the city's million residential enclaves peel back their T-shirts and bare their skin, when curtains flap indoor conversation on to the street, when open doors waft inhabitants outside, and we all get to see what everybody else is made of. August is when the city cul-de-sacs become Ramsay Streets, when residents stop and pass the time of day, and, as afternoon turns to evening, neighbours peer over garden fences to apologise for their barbecue smoke and teatime customers stop to chat in corner shops.
Turkish Ali, my corner-shop owner, gets a brief reprieve from his broken heart at this time of year. The bitch at number 59 led him a merry dance for three years, he says, until she moved another lover in - the same lover to whom Ali now gives pints of semi-skimmed on tick, then moans about to three cooing writers who hang out round his store during non-creative moments. They shake their heads in sympathy and squabble over which one gets his story.
Norman, the old gent at number 23, also blooms at the back ends of August days, able to stand out on his doorstep, hands folded behind his back, flat cap still firmly wedged on, although his shirt is open, showing his white, wrinkled belly.
Now he can nod and smile at every passer-by, instead of staring forlornly from behind his rain-flecked windowpane, trapped in his armchair, condemned to his front room. Anjelica the Croatian refugee, who simultaneously married her English teacher and - without knowing it - Arsenal FC, doesn't just walk straight past Norman today. Instead she stops, smiles and nods as his jolly gums open and close and she struggles to make sense of what he says. On her face is a look of wonder as her first city summer reveals its true colours. Across the road from her, Curtis, the DJ in a wheelchair, is blasting two-step across the pavement, the bass line making the parked cars vibrate. But Curtis has some competition, for Maggiore, the amateur opera singer, can be heard doing her warm-up exercises.
Glad of an audience after all these years of obscurity, she fills the street with scales and octaves. Her living-room sash is pulled right up so that we can admire the red velvet cloak draped over her generous limbs, her hair piled majestically on top of her head, while upstairs from her Nick and Ash, the throwback punk couple with their mangy pitbull, Arthur, lean out of the window for a better look.
Nick is the son of a famous mountain climber, Ash the daughter of a hippy squat that went wrong. With them lives Sid, whose lined face is framed with shocking pink hair (Sid, you are too old for it), and whose tiny son rarely lets go of his hand.
Sid worships Maggiore, and sometimes sits transfixed, cross-legged in front of her window. His son sucks his thumb and watches the older woman's warbling throat, its flesh vibrating like a turkey's neck.
Now it is Rita and Susie's turn to step into the limelight as the August shadows reluctantly lengthen. This hefty couple, with their whippets Lil and Let (really), sit on the curb sipping from Ali's ice-cold cans of Carling, petting each other and inspecting their latest tattoos. Craig, Jesse and Jim are having a kickabout, still demob-happy halfway through their long summer holidays, baggy T-shirts hanging around their knees, baseball caps rammed down over their scheming heads, chortling naughtily every time the ball hits a car window. And as dusk settles, Xandra ("That's Xandra with an X") and Austin in next door's garden clink glasses with their friends, knives scraping plates as they slice the buffalo mozzarella, candles flickering, gladioli bowing down over their table so I can't quite see their faces.
What might they be up to? Is Austin rolling a joint? My usual guess is that he must be, and not the first one of the night, either. Their conversation, which starts off muted, polite, and kissy-kissy, becomes raucous, screaming, guffawing and Austin makes everyone - me included - laugh by falling off his chair.
As the August night deepens, I hear my local ring last orders and listen through my open windows as the punters trip out, talking louder than they need to. Later still, the Latin couple upstairs start rowing again, each new insult hurtling into my bedroom. Soon they are crashing around so violently that my phone is in my hand, my finger poised over the number nine as the sound of shattering glass crashes through the equanimity of the street, and I think: "That's it, that's trouble."
And suddenly, all I can hear is hysterical laughter as they make up for the umpteenth time - at three o'clock in the morning. I put my phone back down, and wonder if I'll need to press the nine next time.
These are the things I know about the people on my street. But what do they know about me? During the rest of the year, nothing at all. They might see me traipsing to work in the grey hours of winter mornings, or stumbling back late at night, dropping my cab fare all over the road. They probably call me Bridget, and snigger when I buy chardonnay from Ali. Do they tut when they see my mascara has run, thinking it's a tryst turned tearful? Do they think I'm on the edge of reason?
At any other time of year, if I dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of the street, only the rag-and-bone man would come along to fetch me. But if it happened now, on an August night, things might be different. In August we see each other, we look rather than peek, we smile in the corner shop rather than scowl, we make way for each other rather than pushing past.
Michelle, with her Corfu cleavage and her fuchsia nails, knows about me now - and what a weirdo I am. She'll tell number 62, who'll tell number 48, and then it will get back to Ali who will - for one month only - make sure everyone knows who I am.
• This series continues next Monday. Tiffanie Darke's novel, Marrow, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £5.99.
