about to hop on the next plane to Tenerife or somewhere. Not sure where Tenerife is. Must remember to remind Mark to sync his iPod when we get back. Make sure he packs the charger. And his mobile. And the mobile charger. Find out where Tenerife is on Wikipedia.
A couple in their twenties sit at the table next to mine. They’ve got a whole bunch of shopping, but it’s nice things, not holiday things or domestic essentials. They seem bubbly and enthusiastic and keep looking at each other and discreetly touching. How long can they have been going out? Six months at the longest, I would say. The man fishes a book out of a carrier bag and rests it on his knee. He’s wearing a watch with a black face and black hands. I try to see what the book is without making it seem like I’m a disturbed lone woman trying to intrude on someone else’s life.
It’s a book about Alphonse Mucha. I love art books (even though I can rarely afford them), and this one looks like it’s really well done. Expensive, too, I would imagine. I remember doing some stuff about Mucha in university. Art Nouveau. A Czech. Lived in Paris. Did posters and jewellery. Sexy girls in flowing robes. Those were the days.
The woman smells strongly of a perfume that I can’t identify. She looks Asian and is extremely beautiful. Very tight jeans. She pulls a dark green velvet scarf out of a bag and strokes it with her hand. She wears lots of rings. In one of her other bags, which is on a spare chair, there’s a very attractive spray of dried flowers. I wonder where he got the book? I wonder where she got the scarf? Will they have sex this afternoon? She looks up, catches my eye and licks her lips. Ooh!
I finish my coffee and automatically look on the floor to make sure I’ve got all my shopping, then remember that I haven’t got any shopping. I leave the toffee muffin. It lies on the plate looking sad, with a solitary bite taken out of its side.
When I get to the sunglasses department, Mark is trying on what is probably his thirtieth pair. These are a pair of grey Oakley Monster Dogs with grey plutonium lenses, which would look cool on a slim, well-toned, nineteen year old extreme sports dude, but look faintly ridiculous on Mark. I hope for his sake that he doesn’t choose them.
‘These are the ones! These are my man!’
Oh well. They cost just over a hundred pounds.
I float into Waterstone’s, barely taking in any of the things on the shelves (books, I believe they’re called). Mark heads straight for the celebrity biographies and is flicking through a Justin Lee Collins book with one hand while holding a Jimmy Carr one under his arm for later perusal. Normally, he’d make a mental note of which books he liked and then go home and buy them for half the price or less on Amazon, but it’s too late for that so he’ll have to buy them at bookshop prices which will really, really hurt.
While he’s doing that, I saunter down to the art book section and automatically look for the Mucha book I saw that guy with in the coffee shop. It’s there, so I pick it up. It’s really heavy, which is always a good sign with these sorts of things and the paper is good quality, too.
I look at the price, but it’s much too much, so I just flick through it. He did the lot, old Mucha. Panels, posters, pastels – and I can’t sell a bloody thing. I’m so lost in it that I don’t notice Mark behind me until he taps me on the shoulder. I hate being tapped on the shoulder. He’s holding five paperbacks and indicates that we should go to the checkout. I put the Mucha book back on the shelf, stroking its spine like we’re an item.
‘What’s that you were looking at?’
‘Alphonse Mucha.’
‘Never heard of him. Come on.’
We head back to the tube station, both of us carrying about five shopping bags in each hand. Even though Mark’s holiday cost was ‘only’ a little over three hundred pounds (apart from the flight, it now turns out, which is £207 RT), I reckon he’s just spent double that in the last hour and a half.
I mustn’t criticise. This is Mark’s holiday and it’s Mark’s money. He can spend it on