Picture Imperfect (4 page)

‘What’ll you be doing in the day,
d’you
think?’ I’m asking this question, but I’m not sure I care about the answer.

‘Well, it says here that they can organise water
skiing, scuba diving and stuff like that, so I might give some of those
a go
. I tried water skiing years ago, but I’ve never tried
scuba. Apparently it’s really good for scuba. Well, you can see for yourself –
lovely, clear water. Look – you can see right down to the bottom. I wonder if
they’ve got a glass-bottomed boat for
hire?
Hey, and
fishing! Just look at these restaurants!’

When Mark has finished drooling over the hotel website,
he starts packing a suitcase. He spends the next half hour asking me where
various items of clothing are. I get so involved in helping him find things
it’s almost as if I’m going with him. On a couple of occasions, lasting only a
fragment of a second, I actually think I am.

He holds various items of holiday clothing up and asks
my opinion about the. Is this one too old? Will this be too hot? Is this one
too out of date? I get a sheet of paper and we make a list of things that he’s
going to have to buy or replace. He finds
a pair of Reef flip
flops, which look OK until you pick them up and notice one of the straps has
broken away from the rubber. He digs out his spare contact lens stuff and
realises he hasn’t got any spare lens fluid. There is no suntan lotion in the
flat at all. His smart pair of sunglasses
are
broken.

By the time we’ve finished, the list stretches almost
to the bottom of a sheet of A4 paper.

An hour later we’re in Oxford Street, unpleasantly busy
as usual, zigzagging from shop to shop trying to find all the stuff he needs. I
almost get run over by a bus. The thing that takes the longest for him to
choose isn’t clothing, as you might expect, but a carry-on shoulder bag. The
one we found in the flat had mould over it, was a bit shabby and he decided it
was too short notice to give it a good scrub and dry it out in time, so he’s
looking for a new one which is the right height, looks cool and fashionable and
doesn’t cost a fortune.

I stand and watch in amazement as he selects various
bags, slings them over his shoulder and walks up and down in a cool,
fashionable manner, tossing his hair back like a z-grade male model. He says
that it’s important how they feel against you when you’re walking. You don’t
want to get one that scrapes against your hip or has got too much of a swing.
You don’t want to look stupid while you’re wearing it.

You could, of course, not use the shoulder strap and
just use the carry handle, but that doesn’t seem to occur to him.
Must be a man thing.
By the time he’s primping around with
Bag 6, I exchange a weary glance with the girl who has the unenviable job of
helping us.

The one he buys is the first one he looked at. Or
modelled, depending upon your point of view.

After an hour of brain-numbing browsing, we’re only
half way down the list. The next stop will be a large chemist where I’m sure
he’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time choosing the perfect sun tan
lotion/oil/whatever. I’m starting to feel exhausted and depressed and I haven’t
even done any shopping. I decide to give myself a break. I tell him I’m going
to pop into the café of a nearby department store and have a coffee and a
blueberry muffin or something similarly life-threatening. We arrange to meet in
the sunglasses department of said store in half an hour.

After he’s chosen some sunglasses
(One hour?
Two hours?)
it’s
on to
Waterstones
to select his holiday reading, probably an
armful of Andy
McNab
novels and some tedious comedy
star autobiographies.

I sit down with my coffee and toffee muffin (tastes
like…fill in the worst thing you can think of) and take a deep breath. Since
this morning, I’ve got so swept up in all of Mark’s holiday arrangements that I
have to keep continually reminding myself that I AM NOT GOING WITH HIM.

It’s really difficult to psych yourself into that state
of mind. Your brain must assume that as you’re walking around shops looking at
suntan oil and sunglasses, you’re 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 what he likes. If I’d
had to go on a holiday like this at short notice, I’d probably have spent
something like the same amount. In fact, I’d probably have spent more on
clothes and beachwear than he has, and I’d have bought a couple of micro
bikinis, items which I know he would never have bought. I’ve never had a micro
bikini. I wonder if I’d have to get a
Brazilian?
I
think I would.

I’m sweaty. When we get back I’m going straight in the
shower. I’ve still got the taste of that horrible toffee muffin in my mouth.
I’ve got a splitting headache. Mark is humming happily to himself.

Sunday 15
^th

Well, today’s the day. I sit down, staring out of the
window, sipping a coffee, but really I’m watching Mark out of the corner of my
eye. He got all his stuff together last night but is leaving it until today to
actually pack his suitcase. Predictably, he’s having trouble closing it. He’s
also faffing about with what to with the stuff in his new carry-on bag. He
wants to put all the books he bought in it, because he still can’t make his
mind up which one of them he wants to read on the flight over.

I tell him to pick the two most likely and to put the
other four in his suitcase. He has two jumpers in his suitcase and a
sweatshirt. I tell him if he took those out and put the books in, he’d be able
to close the suitcase. The likelihood of him needing a jumper in Greece at this
time of year is remote; the average temperature is about 28 degrees. If he gets
there and he’s in the middle of a blizzard, then he can go and buy a woolly
coat in a shop or something. To be honest, I’m a little sick of giving him
advice now. He’s lucky that Danny is dealing with all the money, as he’d never
had had time yesterday to sort out traveller’s cheques and local currency.

Callum
, before his tragic
drunken idiot bike accident, had paid Danny to get him all the tedious money
stuff (sensible boy!), so all Mark has to do is to give a cheque to Danny,
which he will then give to
Callum
. The cheque, it
goes without saying, would be written out to
Callum
.
Does that sound too complicated for a banking lecturer? Well it was.

Mark was fretting about Danny and/or
Callum
ripping him off with the exchange rates and bank
charges for using cheques or something like that. It’s as if even
thinking
about money makes Mark go all
edgy and weird, although he seemed to be OK yesterday when he was treating
himself to about seven hundred pounds worth of holiday goodies. What is it
about guys and money? Why is it so important? Is it fear of uncertainty in a
baffling, confusing world or something? Crippling insecurity combined with the
conviction that everyone is trying to work you over? Did he get it from his
parents? Who
knows.

‘I’m not sure about these flip flops now.’

‘Well, it’s too late. You’ve bought them now. You’ll
probably hardly wear them anyway.’

‘Maybe I can pick up another pair at the airport. It’s
just that these ones feel scratchy when you put them on.’

‘Did you try them on your bare feet in the shop?’

‘No.’

‘Then, sweetie, you only have yourself to blame!’

His voice changes.
It’s
suddenly petulant and mean.

‘You’re really uptight about me going on this holiday,
aren’t
you.
’

‘What brought that on?’

‘Just then.
Having
a go at me about the flip flops.’

‘How was I having a go at you?’

‘You were blaming me for buying a pair I hadn’t tried
on, but everyone knows that nobody tries on flip flops in the shop.’

‘I do.’

‘Well of course you do. Little Miss Perfect.’

‘Oh, fuck off Mark.’

As you can imagine, the atmosphere in the car on the
way to the airport was not filled with deliciously sparkling wit and
light-hearted repartee. I’m holding the steering wheel so tightly that I’m
worried it might come off in my hands.

I thought I’d be a little nervous or angry or
intimidated when I finally met Mark’s holiday chums, but by the time we got to
Heathrow I was in a far more balanced state of mind. Mark and I are both
adults. Someone asked him to help them out by taking the place of a friend who,
though no fault of his own, was no longer able to join them on a quick jaunt to
Greece.
 
A quick
sun-drenched, fun-packed jaunt to Greece.

Mark and I had plans for this coming week, but nothing
that couldn’t be done another time. Mark has been working hard and he’ll have
fun. He deserves the break. If I could have afforded it, I might even have
joined them. Also, I’ll have close on a week to see if I can get some work done
on my canvases. I can be focussed and not have to worry about Mark being around
and having to tidy up every day at five-o-clock. It’ll be good.

God – I almost convinced myself for a moment.

Danny grins and shakes my hand. He addresses Mark like
I’m not there.

‘So this is the little lady, then! You didn’t tell me
you were shacked up with a top model, Mark!’