Page 29 of Glitterland
“Ha-ha, gentleman of the night. Lie-kit! But who said anyfing abaht sex? That was your mind in the gutter, mate.”
“We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are enjoying ourselves down there.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Do we have a deal?”
“That you go shopping and I do anyfing you want? That don’t seem very fair.”
“Well, I don’t like going shopping.”
He frowned. “You won’t,” he asked, in a small voice, “make me do anyfing embarrassing or anyfing, will you?”
“God, no! I promise.”
He cheered almost instantly. “Ahwight, then.” He tapped the train ticket I was still clutching. “So, you need to get everyfing on the list. And make a salad to go wif it.”
“Wait—what? You didn’t say anything about a salad.”
“Later, babes.”
8
Panic
I dashed to the internet to see if any of the local supermarkets had a slot open for same-day delivery.
They didn’t.
Shit. Fuck. Wank. I was going to have to leave the house. Interact with people.
Make a salad? I could copefine, thank you, as long as I had time to prepare. As long as I knew where I was going, what I was doing, what would be expected of me, and how much energy it would take. I needed to plan. Assess the danger. Break the whole activity down into safe, manageable chunks so that the enormity and unpredictability of what lay ahead didn’t overwhelm me.
Go shopping?
It was a minefield of potential disaster.
I stared at my phone and thought about calling Niall, despising the way normal things could make me feel so utterly helpless.
Self-pity. Such an attractive quality.
But it was miserably unfair. Whatever I did, no matter how hard I tried to pretend otherwise, there was no respite from my limitations. I was my own cage. And I hated it. Hated myself.
I put the list down on the kitchen table and carefully scrutinised it. Carrots, garlic, mince. And that was only the beginning. Argh. So manythingsheedlessly demanded in Damian’s careful, round writing. I would be shopping forever. Assuming I didn’t have a nervous breakdown in Sainsbury’s, which wasn’t as remote a possibility as I would have liked.
I considered which scraps of my self-respect I could bear to sacrifice. Niall would help me. Even after everything. Because he always did. And I would inevitably resent him for it. At first, gratitude had felt like love and I’d welcomed it. Now it felt like swallowing razor blades. And today I couldn’t even bring myself to ask. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. Pride, like happiness, was something a madman could ill afford.
Clearly, I was going to fail this very simple task. Which left me wondering how to present it to Essex. “Hi, Darian, sorry, but I’m afraid you’re shagging a mental who occasionally lacks the confidence to leave his own house. Still fancy me now?” That was out of the question. Absolutely out of the question. The sex was reason enough on its own to avoid ruining everything. But somehow, like a fool, I’d come to like Darian’s insistent questions and the way he spoke to me and looked at me. As if he thought I was fascinating and impressive. I’d felt the very opposite of those things for so long I could barely remember what it was like to think otherwise. And I couldn’t lose it. Not yet, anyway. Not so soon.
So that would mean lying to his face. Which I was, I realised with only a minor internal wince at my own perfidy, perfectly prepared to do. I just had to make sure it was plausible.
Except.
He would be disappointed.
And I did not want him to be disappointed.
Oh, no. I couldn’t afford to tangle myself up in other people’s expectations and inevitable disappointment. It would be awful. An ever-expanding cycle of everyone feeling bad, like a bulimic serpent eating its own tail. I’d been through it with my parents, with Niall, with nearly everyone I’ve ever known. I’d fuck up and let them down, they’d feel sad, I’d feel sad, they’d feel sad for making me feel sad, and so on, and so on, and so on. As if I didn’t bear enough frustration and regret on my own account, without also feeling guilty for hurting the people who loved me.
