rail, bedding, cushions, rug, lamp shade, curtains (all in tasteful shades of white or cream), cost under £300. It has taken me a little over an hour and a half, including the breakfast. I feel absurdly pleased with myself. I leave everything, even the small items, to be delivered that afternoon, and catch the bus back to Finsbury Park.
I stop at a small scruffy hardware store and buy the biggest tin of brilliant white paint and a roller and some brushes. When I get home (home!) only Swarthy Boy One appears to be in. He’s cooking something revolting-smelling at the stove again and he ignores me completely, as though he’s deaf, as I gulp a glass of water at the sink. It’s 1.30 already, I need to hurry. I gallop upstairs, change into a T-shirt and the only shorts I’ve brought with me, lug the old bed and wardrobe into the middle of the room, and start to paint.
It’s hot again today and the room is stuffy, but I’m filled with abnormal levels of energy – I seem to have developed some kind of crazy nesting instinct, like when I was... I stop myself, carry on working, try not to think. The room is small and I paint over everything – I don’t bother cleaning first, I just paint and paint and paint, over the grime and the dust, until the peach wood-chip becomes thousands of small flesh-coloured nipples, and then I go round the room again and again without stopping until they finally disappear – it’s so hot the paint seems to be drying fast enough to just keep on going. I do the window frame too – in the same paint, it’s all I have – but it doesn’t matter, the effect I’m after is obliteration of what came before.
I hear the doorbell, one of those old-fashioned sing-song chimes. My Ikea delivery! I race downstairs and yank open the porch door. The man dumps the stuff inside the hallway and there seems to be so much of it I’m worried it’ll annoy my new housemates if I leave it there. I’ve got to hurry. I run back upstairs and carry on painting, like my life depends on it, and maybe it does. When everything is white, I take hold of the revolting old mattress and drag it out the door, haul it along the landing and shove it down the long steep stairs from the top. As it gathers its own momentum the front door opens and a stinking stained mattress practically lands on the mountain of a man who enters.
“Shit, sorry,” I say.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he says, but he softens as he sees me at the top of the stairs in my shorts, covered in paint.
“Hi, I’m Emi- I’m Cat,” I say. “I’ve just moved in. I’m doing up my room a bit.”
“So I can see,” says the man and I realise he must be Jerome, Chanelle’s cousin. “Here, let me help you with that.” And he picks up the mattress like it’s a box of cereal and throws it out the front, next to the bins.
“You got anything else you’re planning on chucking down the stairs?” he asks and I think, thank God for that, and say yes please, a bed frame and a wardrobe. Jerome goes into the shed in the back yard and comes back with a sledgehammer. I’m feeling a little alarmed now, not because I’m wearing hardly anything, alone in the house with a titanic stranger, who incidentally is now wielding a hammer at me, but rather that I hadn’t properly thought through how Chanelle feels about the old bed and wardrobe, we didn’t exactly agree on me going that far with the room improvements. I decide that if she doesn’t like my replacement furniture I can always offer to pay her, hopefully she’d be OK with that, so I let Jerome upstairs and he swings the hammer and he smashes up the brown and beige cupboard and dismantles the bed frame and slings the whole lot out into the front garden, just behind the hedge. It takes him ten minutes.
“You want some help with that new stuff?” he says, and I’m beginning to feel like I’m taking advantage.
“I’m sure I can manage,” I say, but I’m tired now and I must have said it
I stop at a small scruffy hardware store and buy the biggest tin of brilliant white paint and a roller and some brushes. When I get home (home!) only Swarthy Boy One appears to be in. He’s cooking something revolting-smelling at the stove again and he ignores me completely, as though he’s deaf, as I gulp a glass of water at the sink. It’s 1.30 already, I need to hurry. I gallop upstairs, change into a T-shirt and the only shorts I’ve brought with me, lug the old bed and wardrobe into the middle of the room, and start to paint.
It’s hot again today and the room is stuffy, but I’m filled with abnormal levels of energy – I seem to have developed some kind of crazy nesting instinct, like when I was... I stop myself, carry on working, try not to think. The room is small and I paint over everything – I don’t bother cleaning first, I just paint and paint and paint, over the grime and the dust, until the peach wood-chip becomes thousands of small flesh-coloured nipples, and then I go round the room again and again without stopping until they finally disappear – it’s so hot the paint seems to be drying fast enough to just keep on going. I do the window frame too – in the same paint, it’s all I have – but it doesn’t matter, the effect I’m after is obliteration of what came before.
I hear the doorbell, one of those old-fashioned sing-song chimes. My Ikea delivery! I race downstairs and yank open the porch door. The man dumps the stuff inside the hallway and there seems to be so much of it I’m worried it’ll annoy my new housemates if I leave it there. I’ve got to hurry. I run back upstairs and carry on painting, like my life depends on it, and maybe it does. When everything is white, I take hold of the revolting old mattress and drag it out the door, haul it along the landing and shove it down the long steep stairs from the top. As it gathers its own momentum the front door opens and a stinking stained mattress practically lands on the mountain of a man who enters.
“Shit, sorry,” I say.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he says, but he softens as he sees me at the top of the stairs in my shorts, covered in paint.
“Hi, I’m Emi- I’m Cat,” I say. “I’ve just moved in. I’m doing up my room a bit.”
“So I can see,” says the man and I realise he must be Jerome, Chanelle’s cousin. “Here, let me help you with that.” And he picks up the mattress like it’s a box of cereal and throws it out the front, next to the bins.
“You got anything else you’re planning on chucking down the stairs?” he asks and I think, thank God for that, and say yes please, a bed frame and a wardrobe. Jerome goes into the shed in the back yard and comes back with a sledgehammer. I’m feeling a little alarmed now, not because I’m wearing hardly anything, alone in the house with a titanic stranger, who incidentally is now wielding a hammer at me, but rather that I hadn’t properly thought through how Chanelle feels about the old bed and wardrobe, we didn’t exactly agree on me going that far with the room improvements. I decide that if she doesn’t like my replacement furniture I can always offer to pay her, hopefully she’d be OK with that, so I let Jerome upstairs and he swings the hammer and he smashes up the brown and beige cupboard and dismantles the bed frame and slings the whole lot out into the front garden, just behind the hedge. It takes him ten minutes.
“You want some help with that new stuff?” he says, and I’m beginning to feel like I’m taking advantage.
“I’m sure I can manage,” I say, but I’m tired now and I must have said it
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