ground, feeling insane. He listened silently to Ellen’s breath for twenty-five minutes, dreading her mumbling the word ‘Angeloooo’ in her sleep. But she just kept saying, ‘Snore breath snore breath snore breath.’ Twitching, he crept quietly out of the flat, not wanting to wake Ellen and argue with her, instead driving all the way to his Nanna’s house in Eston with the heavy weight of Ellen and Angelo’s naked bodies on top of his head. He’s not sure if he’s overreacting, or if he’s being made a fool of, but either way it’s been a painful couple of days. And just because of tissues! Occasionally Johnnie wishes he had the guts to just dump Ellen and be done with it, but he’s paranoid too that he’ll never go out with anyone more beautiful than Ellen, especially since he’s no Brad Pitt himself, even though he’s got strange psychotic Fight Club tendencies. Anyhow, after a couple of slap-up meals round Nanna’s and a lonely lonely bed to sleep in last night, Johnnie quickly realised what he was missing. And strangely, he feels quite smug that it’s Ellen phoning him and not the other way round, and he asks her, ‘So, what you been up to, darling?’ Ellen scrapes her foot along the crunchy grey carpet, then replies, ‘Er, I’ve just finished at the doley. I was just wondering if I could come over? When are you done with your Nanna? You having dinner at hers?’ Johnnie dodges a pot of mayonnaise, skidding off one wheel, then says, ‘Naw naw, I’ll come and meet you. That’d be mint. I’ll just drop Nanna off in a bit … what say we meet at the flat in about half an hourish?’ Ellen smiles a big cheesy grin and nods, then remembers to speak, ‘Yeah alright.’ The two of them say all their see you laters, and Johnnie considers saying I love you but he doesn’t want to sound too desperate – in his head he wants to be cool and nonchalant and play hard to get and make Ellen work a little bit, but really in this world if you love someone you should definitely tell them. Oh well. He puts the phone down then carries on wheeling the groceries round Lidl with his nutty old granny, and he really doesn’t feel that cool at all. His Nanna looks a bit like a white-haired Ronald McDonald, corned-beef legs dribbling out of her sensible shoes and her red cardigan slowly turning pale burgundy as the years go by. She smells of hospital beds, but she’s got a great sense of humour and a terrible memory which only adds to the hilarity. ‘Who was that?’ she asks once Johnnie’s off the phone. ‘Ellen. You know, Eleanor or whatever you just …’ he says. He can feel weeny sweat patches sprouting under his armpits – there’s no air-conditioning in Lidl, but it makes up for it with the hazy rays of light beaming through the glass, the sort of sight that makes you realise you were right drawing the sun with blocky yellow stripes coming out when you were young. Johnnie was always a shit drawer at school – his suns were just orange spirals, or he wouldn’t draw suns at all, just black clouds instead. Nanna’s got a picture of his at home; this big dark stormcloud in the middle with an evil frowny face. Some teachers thought Johnnie was a disturbed little child, but then again he did go round at breaktime breaking other kids’ toys. Johnnie gets pissed off and says ‘fuck’ when the trolley-wheel gets caught on a jelly–fishy Lidl bag on the ground and gets all mangled, but his Nanna’s always in a good mood and she releases the jellyfish then says to him, ‘Ho ho, someone got out the wrong side of bed today.’ Johnnie didn’t exactly get out the wrong side of bed, it’s just that he didn’t get out of it with Ellen this morning. In the last aisle Johnnie helps Nanna lift three bottles of cut-price Hock into the trolley then pushes it to the cashiers at top speed, desperate now to get home – it’s only been two days, but he’s forgotten what Ellen kisses like, what she feels like, how
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