LITMIR.BIZ

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      Monday 4 July

      Quite relieved to get out of the flat. I offered to stay at home and continue being Florence Nightingale, but Isabel is almost back to normal now. Or else she’s quite keen to get me out of the flat.

      The usual frustrations of the day seem harder to deal with today, possibly because I am suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome by proxy. No one ever looks after the carer.

      Frustration one

      It’s the start of the week and I still appear to be no closer to ever escaping Finsbury Park. I manage to get a seat on the Tube. A fellow citizen of my ‘hood, a gangsta rappa with headphones the size of grapefruit, manages to get the seat next to me. The music is so loud I can hear the vocals: ‘I don’t know what you heard about me; But a bitch can’t get a dollar out of me; No Cadillac, no perms, you can’t see; That I’m a motherfucking P-I-M-P.’ I ask him to turn it down. He says: ‘Interrupt my train of thought again, bitch, and I’ll cut you.’ Then the Tube stops mid-tunnel: someone in another train in another tunnel has pulled the emergency cord. I have to spend the next thirty-five stationary minutes sitting with a man who just threatened to knife me.

      Frustration two

      A woman with a loud voice has just got a job in the book department of Life & Times, which involves her sitting two desks away from me. After an alarmingly short I’m-in-a-new-job-so-must-be-on-best-behaviour honeymoon period (five days), she has settled in and revealed her true colours: she is a phoner of friends and a sorter-outer of home administration at work. This is dreadful news.

      Last week (her first in the office), she booked a holiday to the Maldives (‘I just need to get away from it all for a while’), arranged for a quote on a garden spa bath (‘how much more are those underwater speakers? It wouldn’t be proper without a bit of Courtney Pine bubbling away,’ snort, guffaw, snort) and had a two-hour argument with her daughter about the pros and cons of Gordon Brown.

      This morning, I arrive late because of my one-to-one face time with the knife-man and she’s already mid-conversation with an unspecified friend.

      Johnson is making slit-throat mimes but I don’t know why he’s complaining—he sits seven desks away and, because he likes rock and roll, he can’t hear properly anyway.

      ‘My BUPA insurance has always reimbursed me. Mmm, mmm, mmm, so why’s she taken him off the diet if the stools are only grey? Mmm, mmm. I suppose all I would say is that there is probably a psychological aspect to it, in that she’s a bit of a hypochondriac. Mmm, mmm, mmm. But if they were green…mmm, mmm.’

      My appetite for a morning croissant is ruined.

      Frustration three

      When I call Isabel, mid-afternoon, Alex is there. He has taken the afternoon off work because his arm is too painful and he thought they could convalesce together. Isn’t that sweet?

      Tuesday 5 July

      ‘Barry? Barry? Barry?’

      I haven’t even switched my computer on yet.

      ‘This is a bad line, Barry. Can you hear me, Barry? I wondered whether you were free on Sunday?…Free…On Sunday! No, Sunday…I’ve bought a lamb…Not a lamp.

      ‘A lamb. From the nice place in Wales where we went last summer…No, a lamb. It’s cut up and in the fridge…No, I’m fine, Barry. I said the lamb’s cut up and in the fridge. I’m going to do the shoulder on Sunday. Wondered whether you’d like to come? No, a lamb. I’ll call you back.

      ‘Not a lamp. It’s Sandra. No, I’ll call you back. I’ll call you back.’

      This conversation is repeated throughout the day. The woman is organising a Sunday roast with a group of deaf or stupid people.

      I wish a piano would crash through the ceiling and kill either her or me, I no longer care which.

      When I tell Isabel I wish a piano would crush either me or Sandra, she says I should be more tolerant.

      Wednesday 6 July

      ‘…and I walked in and he was just lying there, in the hallway…’

      This sounds better than the lamb.

      ‘…I thought he might have just been resting, but when I touched him, he was cold. His body was stiff. He was gone. Gone forever. I should have done something. I should have noticed his suffering sooner. He didn’t deserve to go out like this. I should have put an end to it all. But I let him go on. I let him fight on bravely. To suffer. All for my own selfish motives. And now this. Now this…Dying alone…Alone…On the floor…In the hall.’

      Hacking, racking, sloppy sobs. I’m guessing a husband. A lucky husband who’s taken the easy option: slow, painful death in a hallway rather than slow, painful life with Sandra.

      ‘I picked him up, wrapped him in kitchen towel and flushed him down the loo. He meant so much to me.’

      A goldfish? A bloody goldfish? I have to listen to all that for a bloody flipping goldfish. Surprised it wasn’t her husband. I’d have killed myself long ago if I’d been married to this. Or just killed her.

      The managing editor ushered me into his office later in the day and pointed out that since Sandra had been recently widowed, it was somewhat tactless to go on about it. I said I had no idea about the widowing and that I hadn’t been going on about it. He said I had. I said I hadn’t. He said I’d been overheard ranting about how I’d have killed myself if I’d been married to Sandra. Or at the very least killed her. I said I’d only thought that, I hadn’t actually said it. He said I had. I said I hadn’t. Unless of course I had been thinking out loud, which sometimes happens. This didn’t seem to make him any happier. He said he’d have to put it in my record. I said fine but that Sandra was really annoying.

      Thursday 7 July

      Isabel’s magical dissolving stitches aren’t dissolving. By the time I get home, Isabel is lying spread-eagled on the kitchen table, clutching a pair of sterilised eyebrow pluckers.

      ‘Darling, we must get them out now. They’re itching.’

      ‘But shouldn’t we go to hospital?’

      ‘No, Mummy said it was easy. It’s not worth the schlep back there.’

      ‘What about the GP?’

      ‘It can’t wait.’

      ‘Okay.’

      ‘Now call Mummy.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Call her. She’s going to instruct you.’

      ‘Your mother is going to instruct me to remove your stitches?…From your—’

      ‘Come on. I’m getting cold.’

      Clutching the pluckers, I call her.

      ‘Right, William. Are the pluckers sterilised? Good. Are your hands washed? Good. Are Isabel’s legs open? William? William? No time to be squeamish now, William. None of us was born yesterday. Now, you see the labia majora?’

      Oh God.

      Friday 8 July

      Isabel is staying with her parents for the weekend to recuperate further. I don’t have to stay with her parents for the weekend because Arthur Arsehole has lined up some ‘very keen’ prospective buyers. I am charged with being present but not present. I must vacuum. I must plump cushions. I must keep the flat spotless,

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