I don’t know about your bank holiday weekend, but mine is being spent facing my demons, credit and debit. 

Barry needs a repayment plan.  Barry has said that once the plan is in place, I must NOT default.  To be honest he was quite crisp.  I am not sure if he even wished me a nice weekend.  What the hell am I thinking about, worrying that the Bailiff didn’t wish me a happy weekend?   Its crunch time, despite the nice lady in pearls and her words of encouragement, there is simply not enough money coming in to cover my outgoings.  Fewer pluses than minuses!  The shortfall is over £500 a month.   And that is without a proposed repayment plan for Barry to offer “the office”.  The desperate truth is lit up, like a meteor in the sky.  I do have to sell the house, I can’t afford it.  I feel sick.  I think about my daughter, I bought her back to this house when she was a day old.  Her childhood is this house, her four year old fairy wings are still up on her wall.  I sink to my knees.  What use is that “miracle youth serum” costing a ludicrous amount of money, money that could feed us for a week, which had been sent to me this week as a “freebie”.  Some misguided PR thinks I am still writing for a newspaper. 

A fellow writer, who’s had her fair share of tussle in her past, and does not judge me for my love affairs with Marc Jacobs and Stella McCartney, telephones and proscribes a bit of retail therapy at Hoxton Market.   “How can I go to the Market?” I wail down the phone. “To look at beautiful things, and admire other people’s creativity” my wonderful friend tells me.   And, of course, she is right.

I shove the bills inside a file which is left propped up by the computer, and rush off to meet her.  I walk to the nearest station on Zone 2, and then I discover than another twenty minutes by foot power, will take me to zone 1.  I have the time, of such small economies, bigger economies are made. 

We do the market.  We have fun.  I realise I haven’t had fun since this whole nightmare began.  We drool over beautifully cut clothes, we try on hats and gorgeous jewellery and no one seems to mind that we don’t buy.  There are a lot of tourists who are buying; the euro goes a long way these days.    

Now we are sitting at the back of a “happy bar”, served by a lovely young woman wearing scarlet lipstick.  My friend, she’s been commissioned to write a screenplay,  orders two vodka tonics,  “on me” she says gently.

I don’t cry until I talk about the daughter’s fairy wings. She doesn’t offer platitudes; she wouldn’t, she hails from Glasgow.  But my friend understands about love, she understands about guilt, and she understands Marc Jacobs!  

We decide on an E Bay picnic. I will make sandwiches; it’s amazing what you can do with a can of sardines, some chilli, parsley. and a slug of the sardine oil on oven toasted bread.  She will bring wine.   We will go through all my clothes and decide what can be auctioned.

I know my friend will put a flower in her hair, and I know she will expect me to be wearing earrings and make up.  She will turn the sale day into a party.  That’s the way she is.   And no one can buy her for money.