Things seem to have fallen 

Things seem to have fallen into some sort of pattern. For the first time in many months I’m close to having a routine again. Plus I’m beginning to eat a little better. Or, at the very least, more regularly. I somehow seem to have drummed up a bit of an appetite.

There’s the odd moment when I consider what I’m doing and worry that I’ve gone completely loco. That I’m on the verge of doing something dreadful, etc. But then I fill my flask and stuff a couple of tuna rolls into my pocket and go merrily on my way.

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I’ve thought about coughing up the five or ten pounds and trooping round the actual reserve with all the regular punters. I suspect that, with a little forethought, I could quite easily contrive to trip over him. But I’d like our encounter, when it finally happens, to be a bit more intimate. I don’t want anyone else wandering in and spoiling the scene.

I did something rather reckless this lunchtime. I’d slept in, and missed them leaving. But I felt the need for a little fix, so I crept through the woods and up to my tumble-down bunker. Then, having checked that both cars had gone I took a deep breath, climbed over the wall and carried on right up to the house.

I had a little walk around it. Peered in through the various windows. This is where they sit to eat their breakfast … this is where they sit and watch TV … etc.

I sat in the little porch for a couple of minutes. On the opposite side, under the bench, was a load of logs, all neatly chopped and stacked. And on my side, right by my feet were a row of dirty boots and wellingtons, big and small.

It’s a lovely little porch. The actual front door is a solid old thing, probably the same age as the house and painted a beautiful deep green. I sat and looked at it for a minute. Some of the paint was worn away below one of the keyholes, presumably where the other keys on the ring have rattled against it over the years. So you could see the bare wood revealed beneath it, and all the layers of paint in between. The paint on the rest of the door was pretty much pristine. Had an almost perfect finish, like plastic. And I had this peculiar urge to puncture that perfect finish. To carve my name, or maybe just my initials into it somewhere. In a corner. Just to say, I’m still here. I haven’t gone away.

If I could’ve found a bit of wood sharp enough to do some decent scratching I would’ve done so, but I couldn’t. All I really need, I thought, is a little vegetable knife. And I made a mental note to try and remember to bring one along next time around.

Going right up to the house really was pretty stupid. Paul could’ve quite easily popped back at any moment – just to pick something up. Of course, that in itself wouldn’t necessarily have been the end of the world. Except that when we meet I very much want to be in control of the situation. For once I would like to decide how things unfold.

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My mobile phone is as dead as a dodo. The battery packed up about two weeks ago. Which is no major privation, but may well have made life a little easier today, in that the bank might’ve got in touch to warn me that I’d exceeded the limit of my overdraft. As it was I had to suffer the indignity of having my card rejected – or should I say, declined – at the local shop. Lesser mortals, no doubt, have run outside and doused themselves in petrol following such public humiliation. Personally, it’ll take a lot more than the faux embarrassment of some overweight shop assistant to worry me.

But the little to-do in the Spar shop was followed soon after by a dressing-down in the bank in Sheringham, where a youth in a drip-dry shirt took it upon himself to lecture me on the finer points of cash-flow and money-management. I was tempted to say, Have you any idea how much my house is worth, you little dickhead? That big, empty house on top of the hill in north London. The one where I can’t watch the telly without flipping my lid. Or how much I have in my savings now that my hubby’s popped his clogs. Cut a girl some slack. All I need is enough money to keep myself in booze and fags and tuna sandwiches while I stalk my ex-lover for another couple of days.

But apparently I must seek absolution and overdraft extension from some faceless sage up at head office. Which I flat-out refused to do. So I just withdrew a couple of hundred quid on one of my credit cards and sashayed out of there. Which is the kind of wanton, reckless behaviour that would’ve brought poor old John out in a nasty rash.