there bringing a tear to her eye. Why in this world can you not just do what you want? Cavemen got on alright without money and dole ladies and Asda. Ellen sits all tired and grumpy in the MDF booth, stalling for a bit then, in a flash of inspiration, she says to the dead phone, ‘Hi, is that Asda? … Yeah, can I speak to Gloria please? … Oh, hi! Yeah, I hope so … I’d like to apply for the post of sales assistant, please … Oh, really? … Well great, yes, that’d be lovely. Monday. Nine fifty-five. Nice one … Okay, yep, will do … Alright, ta ra.’ Ellen turns and smiles at the dole lady, giving her a dead corny thumbs-up and the lady nods, slightly suspicious but not really giving much of a shit now. She’s got another person to see (girl with the peacock hair), and Ellen swivels in her swivelly chair grinning to herself. There’s a sign above the phone saying NO PERSONAL CALLS, but Ellen decides she might as well give Johnnie a personal call seeing as it’s free and she’s free from the horrible lady too. Her breath crackles on the creaky black plastic. ‘Where are you?’ she asks when Johnnie picks up, and it’s a relief to hear his voice, ‘I’ve been dead worried. What are you up to?’ Johnnie sniffs. ‘I’m just in Lidl,’ he replies, pushing the cagey trolley round the aisles while his Nanna picks up packs of potatoes and orange juices and chopped tomatoes and slings them in. ‘Eh?’ Ellen ehs, twizzling the wire round her little finger. ‘Ah, I’m just helping Nanna out with the shopping, aren’t I,’ Johnnie says, his grandmother suddenly perking up with Choco Rice in one hand and wittering, ‘Ooh is it Eleanor? Tell her hello from me, John, tell her hello from me.’ Nanna stands there for a good minute with the box in her claw like a stone sculpture, staring at her grandson until he finally says, ‘Yeah, Ellen, our Nanna says alright by the way.’ Nanna grins and carries on loading the trolley (it’s brilliant in Lidl, you can get noodles for 13p and eight Excelsiors for £ 4.49), Johnnie breaking his back trying to scoot it round with one hand. It’s been a terrible couple of days for him – he doesn’t mean to get paranoid all the time, but he had to run away after getting all upset about a couple of tissues in his dustbin. Of all the things! Early Tuesday morning, just before he disappeared, Johnnie woke up very proud to have Ellen back and to be feeling like a sort of hardcase Don figure around the block, and he decided to treat himself to his first wank in fifteen days. Ellen was snoring. He got out the uncut video of Arse Mania VI (the one where five men practically gang-rape a young girl), but when he reached for the box of mansize Kleenex he was dismayed to find the box empty. Scratching his head in very over-the-top confusion, Johnnie saw the bin next to Ellen’s side of the bed was full of screwed-up tissues, glooped together in what looked like PVA. Shuddering, Johnnie quickly came to the conclusion that either Ellen’s got a cold and a very very runny nose, or she’s been seeping somebody else’s semen. True to form, Johnnie Jealousy decided to believe the latter. After all, Johnnie hadn’t wanked or shot spunk into Ellen for weeks (their last excruciating shag was cut short by the Express pizza boy), and he hadn’t heard her sniffing recently. Johnnie fell to the floor in agony, imagining Angelo’s thick jizz oozing out of Ellen’s fanny bum and mouth. He cried a couple of tears. Getting wound up, Johnnie scrabbled round the carpet like a bull terrier, trying to gather up more clues and evidence. He felt certain Ellen’s lacy blue knickers (the ones she wore not last night but the night before) smelt of another man’s aftershave, and he started to see claw marks in her skinny exposed back, and he even dished the tissues out of the dustbin and took a lungful of their scent, and he felt fairly certain they ponged of semen. Johnnie dropped back down to the
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