Excess Baggage by Judy Astley

dull sage green and old-mac beige. Those colours now starred on all the smartest paint charts, with names like ‘Norfolk Herring’ and ‘Sphagnum’. Her heart sank, remembering those apartments that smelled of a thousand fry-ups, every time a client sought colour guidance and brought up the term ‘historical shades’. Why didn’t they travel to places like this, or even just look at photos, and choose clear bright tints that thrilled the heart like this ludicrously vivid sea, the colour of a bleached peacock? No wonder the British middle classes suffered from SAD, she thought, considering the dismal gloomy shades they thought it so tasteful to live with. Perhaps if they painted their surroundings with the translucent colours of life, rather than of the worst-weather skies, their winters would be a lot less miserable.
    ‘Coming to get some lunch?’ The slim shadow of Lucy fell between Becky and the sun. ‘I know it’s a bit early, but I feel like I’ve been up for days and now I’m starving.’
    Becky thought for a second or two about the effort of moving off her lounger again. If Mark had been asking, or her mother, or Theresa, she’d probably have said no. But this was Lucy, the one she liked, the one who she instinctively felt knew what it was like to be always in the wrong inside the tender cage that’s called a family. She scrambled to her feet and wrapped a tiny scarlet skirt round her hips. ‘Yeah, I’ll come with you. Where are we going?’
    ‘There’s a bar by the pool. They do lunch-type food like burgers and sandwiches and salads and stuff.’
    ‘Oh good. Chips.’ Becky giggled.
    ‘Definitely chips. I can smell them from here. Just like home.’
    Becky looked out at the sea. ‘No, thank God, not a bit like home.’
    Mark, walking under the trees, could see them all lying like pale pink sausages, grilling on loungers by the pool. Theresa was talking to someone, a straw-blonde deep-tanned woman with a gold swimsuit and a wrist-ful of bracelets that glinted in the light. She was lighting a cigarette, offering one to Theresa who shook her head. Shirley was fussing with Sebastian, pulling his blue gingham hat down firmly over his ears. Sebastian was fighting back, wrenching the hated thing off his head the moment his grandmother let him go.
    Mark watched as Theresa stood up, stretched lazily and adjusted the bottom of her swimsuit. It was a sexy, artless little gesture. He’d have liked his fingers to be the ones brushing gently just inside the fabric, but there was a horrible problem getting in the way of sex. His penis was sore, aching with a flinty, constant pain. He couldn’t even dull it with a drink, for the clinic nurse had been pretty emphatic that these particular antibiotics just didn’t go with alcohol – the combination would mean instant vomiting. He remembered her face as she told him, handing out this small piece of gleeful punishment. She’d had that careful look, the professionally indifferent, seen-it-all-before one that everyone in clap clinics (or ‘sexual health’ centres, as they were now called) had. Somehow, in the over-deft way she’d wielded the needle when she took a blood sample from his arm, there was a judgement, and a small not-quite-suppressed sigh that told him she was having to do this far too many times to too many men for her liking. She’d spent a long time washing her hands, vigorously sluicing away every trace of his tart-borne infection. Nice men don’t pay for sex. Mark knew that. He was no longer a nice man. On five furtive and deliciously seedy occasions now he hadn’t been a nice man at all and was about three hundred pounds and a nasty, persistent dose of NSU down on the deal. The nurse needn’t have bothered; Mark’s own remorse was punishment enough.
    ‘Hey, Mark! Come and choose something for lunch!’ Shirley was waving a menu at him, smiling. Mark grinned back and started walking towards the group which was now taking over several