bought. Ruth asks Margot if she’s got any moisturiser. It’s as if I’m invisible. I feel like a mega-gooseberry and want to get away as fast as possible.
‘OK. Good. Well I must dash. Don’t want to pay a fortune to the car park people here!’
Mark smiles at me and takes my arm, moving me a few feet from the others. ‘Thanks for letting me do this, baby. We’ll have a ball when I come back, I promise. You are a star.’
‘You have a nice time. I’ll expect to see a fantastic suntan when you return.’
‘I’ll be totally bronzed! I’ll send you a postcard. Two postcards.’
‘If he’s ever sober enough to write one!’ shouts Danny, who’s been listening from a distance.
Ruth picks her nose when she thinks no one is watching.
Mark kisses me on the cheek. We all say goodbye to each other and I finally disengage myself from Mark and walk to the exit. I think Danny wanted to give me a kiss, but I positioned myself so that couldn’t happen and gave off bad vibe body language. I turn around to take a last look at them all. They’re looking for seats at a nearby coffee place. Margot is laughing at something. A fat chap with a moustache is looking at Margot’s boobs. Danny is looking at Ruth’s boobs, then at Margot’s boobs, then at Ruth’s boobs again. As I head towards the car park, two Italian-looking guys walk past and they both look at my boobs. One of them makes eye contact with me and smiles sweetly.
On the way back in the car, I stick Yeah Yeah Yeahs first CD on at high volume and sing along, banging the steering wheel with both hands in accompaniment. Five days. Not even a whole week. I’m sure it’ll go really quickly. Tenerife is in The Canary Islands.
Monday 16th
I wake up feeling like I’ve had a really good night’s sleep. I drank a whole bottle of white wine last night, but I don’t feel like I’ve got a hangover. No Mark means no alarm going off at 0650. I stretch like a cat under the sheets and, without opening my eyes, scrabble around on the floor for my watch. Once it’s right in front of my face, I open one eye and see that it’s nine fifteen. I think this is the latest that I’ve woken up since I’ve lived with Mark. When he’s working he always gets up at the same time and at the weekends I have to get up early to do the housework and shopping. When Mark finally gets up, he tends to do ‘things’, instead of helping around the flat.
These ‘things’ are usually browsing the interweb for flash sports cars which he’ll never be able to buy and playing online games with people he doesn’t know, most of whom are probably half his age, if that. All these games are usually called things like Sword of Anguish, PlanetMaster3 or similar. Sometimes I wish he’d look at something more suited to a man of his age, like lesbian porn. I mean, even I’ve looked at lesbian porn.
After nakedly squirming around in the warmth of the bed for another fifteen minutes or so, I take the advanced step of opening my eyes and staring at the ceiling for half an hour, thinking about what I’m going to do today. The painting. I’ve got to try and finish that bloody painting.
If I could somehow discipline myself to do a certain amount of work a day instead of doing it when I felt like it, I’m sure I could get both canvases finished by the end of the week. Maybe even sooner. I’m OK once I’ve started; it’s motivation is the problem, or the lack of it.
The one I’ve already started on I call Canvas One. The one that is jeering at me in all its blankness, well, I’ve decided to call that Canvas Two. I guess being an artistic sort of person I could think up something more interesting for both of them, but I’m afraid that would colour the viewer’s perception when they’re hanging in The Tate Gallery next month I don’t think.
After I’ve had a very long shower using far too much Beautiful by Ēstee Lauder shower gel, I make some breakfast then have a second cup of coffee accompanied by a ciggy. Mark doesn’t like me smoking full stop, but he particularly doesn’t like me smoking in the flat. As he’s not here, of course, I