Picture Imperfect (3 page)

‘Yeah.
That one’s really good.
They went off for a while, didn’t
they.
Maybe they
hired a new chef or something. Um – you don’t mind about this, do you?
Me going to Greece, that is.
I mean, it’s not even a week,
really, as I said.
Just five whole days and a day’s travel at
either end.
I just would feel bad if I let Danny down. You must tell me
if you mind. If you don’t want me to go I won’t go, though I’ve more or less
told Danny I would. But I can cancel the whole thing. I’ve got his mobile
number. You don’t mind, do you, baby?’

He reaches across and holds my hand. It must be
Christmas. Did he just call me baby? I smile unconvincingly.

‘Of course not.
I don’t mind
at all. As you said, you have been working hard recently. It’d be a nice break
for you.’ Mark spoons sugar into his coffee. He takes a great deal of time and
care about it, as if he’s doing it for the first time. ‘What do Mark’s friends
do?’ I’m scrutinising every square millimetre of his face, looking
for…something.

‘The girls?
I don’t know, to
be honest. I think one of them works with Danny, but the other one I’m not sure
about. She could be a friend of the one he works with. I’m not really sure.
They’re just girls.’

‘Doesn’t Danny have a girlfriend at the moment?’

‘He didn’t mention it, but then again the conversation
we had didn’t go that way. We talked about college, what people we knew were
doing now and then he mentioned this holiday thing.’

‘What about
Callum
?’

‘Girlfriend?
I have no idea.
Don’t really know the guy.’

If
Callum
did turn out to
have a girlfriend, I’d suspect that it was her who pushed him off his bike and
into A&E. Mark puts his arm around me and does that sincere look that I’ve
come to know so well.

‘I wasn’t really that keen when he first mentioned it.
I know we’d planned to do a couple of things next week when I was off, but I’ll
make it up to you. We’ll do loads of stuff when I come back. Every weekend
we’ll do something. It’s just that I don’t see my old friends that often and…’

I give Mark a smile that’s meant to indicate that’s
he’s justifying himself too much when there’s really, really no need to at all.
This marvellous smile is also letting him know that he has no reason to feel
guilty or do something marvellous every weekend for the foreseeable future. As
I’m sure you’ve guessed
,
this is a very complex type
of smile that not many people would be capable of mastering. I’m quite proud of
this smile, to be honest. It’s a multi-purpose smile.

Accompanying this smile, though, is a sort of
semi-unintentional dead look in my eyes that is reminding him that we hadn’t
just planned to do a couple of things next week; we’d planned to do about
thirteen things, from what I can remember, and I’ve already paid for one of
them…

My voice is light and carefree.

‘There’s no problem.
Really.
It’ll give me a chance to get on with my work. With you out of the way I can
work much longer hours.
Might even start on that second
canvas.’

‘That’s what I thought! That’s exactly why I thought it
would be a good idea. I could get out of your hair for a while.’

‘I can really get my head down and focus on things.’

It’s as if someone else is saying all these things for
me. I can’t imagine who. I don’t like them very much, though.

‘That’s the spirit. Has what’s her name…’

‘Rhoda?’

‘That’s right. Has Rhoda got any plans for what you do
next?
Anywhere to sell them to?
Anything
like that?’

‘It doesn’t really work like that. Unless you’re some
internationally renowned artist, you have to actually finish the work before
your agent attempts to sell it.’

‘Oh.
Shame.
Well, you’ve still
got the temping.’

‘Yes.’

And so we talk and talk about anything except the
elephant in the room and after a few hours or so, the whole Greek holiday thing
seems to float away; like it’s something I saw on a TV show and somehow got
confused with real life. But occasionally it come flying back and jabs me in
the stomach to remind me that it’s real. I’m a solitary sort of person usually,
but I suddenly think that I need someone to talk to about this. Get some sort
of second opinion, because I think I’m so freaked that I don’t have an opinion
at all.

We go to bed and Mark is feeling frisky. After all, he
says, we won’t see each other for a whole week. I
fake
it from beginning to end. I’ve got too many other things floating around my
mind to concentrate on anything as mundane as sex. By that, I don’t mean that
sex is mundane or that sex with Mark is mundane. Well, it can be sometimes.
Maybe it isn’t mundane at all. I haven’t really discussed it with anyone else.

I often worry about this. You’re out with a girlfriend
(or
girl friend
, I’m not fussy) and you casually
mention something about your sex life and she suddenly looks horrified. ‘My
god, Chloe – you have the most appallingly mundane sex life. What are you doing
with that guy? Are you insane?’

Just before I fall asleep to the sound of Mark’s light
snoring, I try and think of what two girls and two guys could get up to on
holiday in a hot, sensual Mediterranean country like Greece. I’ve never been
there so I can only imagine what it’s like. I have seen it on TV, though.
Splashing around in the warm sea all day, sunbathing, visiting places of
interest, sun tan oil, olive oil, exotic food washed down every evening with
Retsina
…

And it’s all going to be platonic. Two guys, one in a
relationship back home and two girls who are probably single. Maybe they’re not
single. Maybe they would tell their boyfriends or husbands that they were going
on holiday to Greece with a couple of blokes, one of whom they hadn’t even met
yet. What would a husband or boyfriend say to that? ‘Sure. Enjoy yourself.
Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! Here’s five hundred pounds spending money.
Here’s another thousand - get a boob job. Are you packing that really skimpy
extreme micro bikini? I’ll go and find it for you. You look great in that. I
love you.’

There are other alternatives, of course. The girls are
single and want to work on their tan, get pissed up and have a well-deserved
break from whatever. They might be hard-working secretaries or PAs. In the
evening, they dress up and work their high heels, boobs and junk at some disco
or other while Mark and Danny get completely hammered in the hotel bar and talk
about old times or town planning. At the end of the evening, Danny falls in the
hotel swimming pool fully dressed and Mark takes photos with his phone. They
have a good laugh and that’s that. That would happen every night, obviously.

That scenario would explain why Danny didn’t want to go
on his own without
Callum
. Two girls with one guy
doesn’t
work except in porn films. But what happens if the
girls don’t pull? For some reason, I’m imagining that they both look like
sexed-up versions of Angelia Jolie. What if they’re plain and dumpy? Would that
be better or worse? Supposing they go out on the pull and no one pulls them?
They stagger back to the hotel at three a.m. reeking of
Vod
-Bombs
and the only two available males are Mark and Danny, both too pissed to know
what they’re doing any more.

A few years ago, a friend of mine called Anna went on
holiday to Tunisia for a few days with her best mate Wendy. Anna had affairs
(polite term) with three different guys (separately, I think), but explained
that it didn’t feel like she was being unfaithful to her bf Tim as he was
really far away and it didn’t count. I’m sure Tim would have agreed
wholeheartedly.

My eyelids are getting heavy. Mark has always talked
about us going on holiday somewhere hot. It hasn’t happened because of me, I
suppose. He’s always insistent that we go Dutch on everything, even splitting
that damned shopping list item by item so everything’s fair. We’ve never had a
row about it or anything. Never even spoken about it to any great degree, but
sometimes I think to myself that Mark would be better off with a richer girlfriend.
Someone whose bank account he could respect.
Someone who he
could invest in things with.

As I finally start to drop off to sleep I start
thinking all sorts of stupid thoughts. You’re thirty-two, you’re a failed
artist and your boyfriend is going on holiday to Greece with a couple of tarts
and their pimp. You’ve always wanted to go to Greece, haven’t you? Go on –
admit it. All that culture. You’re just jealous. You’re jealous of everybody.
You are Mrs Jealous of
Jealousyville
. You’re even
jealous of Danny. Danny Crump. Danny Crump and his bicycle pump.
Top bloke, real laugh and town planner.
Danny
Crump’s embarrassing lump.

Saturday 14
^th

I wake up and, without opening my eyes, reach across
for Mark, but he’s not there. This is unusual. On Saturday he lazes about in
bed for as long as he can, while I do most of the tedious housework stuff. I
check the time on my alarm clock. It’s 7.44. I can smell coffee and I can hear
faint tapping on a computer keyboard. So he’s got up and made himself some
coffee without making me one. Well, somehow I’m not surprised. I lie there for
a while, staring at the ceiling, until my brain starts to function properly. I
only had about half a bottle of wine last night, but that’s enough to give me a
slight hangover. My tongue feels it’s made of leather.

I swirl the concept of Mark’s Greek holiday around in
my brain for a few seconds, to see if a night’s sleep will have given me a
different perspective on the whole thing. It still feels slightly wrong, for
some reason I can’t quite put my finger on. I try to put myself in a similar
position.

I meet Melissa, a friend from university, whom I
haven’t seen for ages. She and her friend – we’ll call her Sue – are planning a
holiday in Greece. There are two guys going with them, as well. Unfortunately,
Sue breaks her leg and can’t go. I bump into Melissa and she says hey! Why
don’t you come! It’ll be fun! I agree and go home to tell my boyfriend that I’m
going off on holiday with Melissa and her two man friends (or
manfriends
, if you prefer).

The most reasonable, laid-back boyfriend in the
universe would say ‘Hey! That’s great! Hope you have a great time! Enjoy
yourself! Don’t worry about all the plans we’d made. Can’t wait to see you with
an all-over tan.’ and he’d mean it.

But most boyfriends wouldn’t take it like that, I
suspect. In fact, the most reasonable, laid-back boyfriend in the universe
sounds like a bit of a jerk, doesn’t he.
Sounds like he
doesn’t care about you or what you do one way or the other.

I think a normal boyfriend’s jaw would hit the floor if
you announced something like that.

I get up and have a shower. Should I be nonchalant
about the whole thing, or would that make it look like I don’t care about Mark
or what he does? Who knows? I tell myself that it can’t be that bad. I’m just
over-reacting. If anything suspicious was going on, Mark wouldn’t have
mentioned it to me in the first place, or at least he wouldn’t have mentioned
the girls. Wait. That doesn’t make sense. I’ll be seeing the other three when I
drop him off at the airport tomorrow. I could hardly fail to notice that two of
them were girls. And besides, he could hardly slip away for a week’s holiday
without me noticing. Sorry – not a week – five days.

My brain plainly isn’t working properly at the moment.
I get out of the shower and dry myself off. Before I start to get dressed, I
look at myself in the mirror. Not bad. Without meaning to seem like an
egomaniac, I think I’d look pretty good in a skimpy bikini. Has Mark ever seen
me in a skimpy bikini? I don’t think so. We’ve never been on that sort of
holiday.

After I’ve had breakfast and four cups of coffee to
bring my leathery tongue back to life, I hear Mark calling for me.

‘Chloe?
Come and have a look
at this!’

I stroll into the living room, where Mark in tapping
away on the computer. I peer over his shoulder to see what he’s looking at. I
hate doing this.
Standing up while bending over almost double
to look at a screen which is positioned for a person sitting down in front of
it.
Personally, I think that the person showing you something wonderful
should stand up and let you sit down. Maybe I should write a book on PC
etiquette.

‘This is the hotel I’ll be staying at.
Fab, yeah?’

I lean forward and take a look. It looks like lots of
other place you see in all the world’s various holiday resorts. There’s a
picture of an enormous blue swimming pool, but it’s also got those
scary-looking flumes that kids like to slide down.
Big, long,
winding ones.
The whole thing looks like it was built about two weeks
ago, though I’m sure it can’t be that recent.

There are photographs of spotless rooms with twin beds
and bland prints, beautiful, white-sanded beaches, perfect couples sharing a
glass of Champagne at some restaurant or other and people strolling down secluded
coves. As you’re reading, a slide show of various tourist attractions drifts
past. I feel rather light-headed looking at it all.

‘The girls will be in one twin room and me and Danny
will be in another. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like sharing a room with
Danny. He was quite a big drinker, so hopefully he won’t be up all night
talking or anything. I guess we’ll go and check out all the bars and then come
back to the room and pass out!’