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shrugged and stared at the telly. The Chancellor
of the Exchequer had announced that high street spending was up by fifteen
percent.
    “You been out shopping again?” Larsen smiled. I
didn't laugh. He sat down next to me and took my hand. I let it flop in his,
like a fish.
    “How's your ankle?” he asked.
    “Sprained.”
    “How did it happen?”
    I told him. Larsen looked shocked. “What the hell
were you doing, crossing there?”
    “I don’t need a lecture,” I said. “It hurts.”
    He folded his arms and sat back, staring at the
telly. A minute later he turned and smiled at me, leaned forward and promptly
started kissing me. I was so surprised, I couldn't react for a second or two. Larsen
took that as a green light, and thrust his hand up my jumper. I pulled back.
    “What?” He looked hurt.
    “This isn’t the time…”
    “It’s never the time,” said Larsen. “These days.” He
stood up.
    I looked up at him. “Where are you going?”
    “To get a drink,” he said, and disappeared into
the kitchen.
    The noise of the television suddenly became too
loud. I picked up the remote and switched it off, lit a cigarette and looked
around the room, trying to figure out something to say before he came back;
something to make us both feel better. I looked at the walls - white with a
shade of green - that Larsen and Doug had painted when we first moved in, and
the framed oil on canvas over the gas fire that Jude had given us as a
housewarming present. It was supposed to be a man and a woman embracing but it
just looked like streaks of angry colour and meant nothing to me. I suddenly
felt the urge to throw something at it. I wondered if I concentrated hard
enough I could make it fall off the wall.
    Larsen returned from the kitchen with a bottle of
whisky and two glasses. He looked from me to the painting and back again, and
frowned.
    I said, “You don’t know how tired I get, doing a
different shift every week. And I’m in quite a lot of pain, you know.”
    Larsen said nothing. He twisted the top off the
whisky bottle and poured two generous measures.
    “Not everything can be solved by jumping into bed
or downing a bottle of Jack Daniels,” I added.
    Larsen handed me a glass and I took it. “I can’t
do anything to please you anymore,” he said. “I don’t have anything you want.”
    “Oh Larsen, that’s not true!” I protested weakly. “It’s
just… different now, that’s all. Things have changed.”
    “Well, I haven’t changed,” said Larsen.
    I sighed. I realised he thought of this as some
kind of plus point.
    “No, you haven’t,” I said. “You never change. You’re
still exactly the same as you were when I met you, only you drink more, are at
home less, and I’m sorry to tell you, Peter Pan, you’ve got a few more wrinkles
on your face.”
    Larsen’s hand flew automatically to his cheek. He
stood up and started pacing the room.
    “That's so bloody typical,” he said, angrily, and
stopped to jab his finger at me. “You used to like me the way I was. You
thought I was funny, even when I was drunk. I never pretended to be anything I wasn't.”
    “Well, it stops being funny after a while.”
    “And what about you?” he continued.
    “What about me?”
    “Well, if I'm Peter Pan, then you're bloody Wonder
Woman. All you care about is reading the bloody one o'clock news and roaming
around the countryside, chasing after the story that's going to get you that
news editor job that you're after.”
    I took a large swig of whisky. “What's wrong with
roaming around? I like roaming around. I want to go everywhere. You don't want
to go anywhere. I want to go to Paris…Rome…I want to go to Africa. Bosnia,
maybe.”
    “ Bosnia ?” Larsen looked up at me as though
I were an alien. “You are kidding, right?”
    “It’s important, what’s happening to the people
there. The Serbs…”
    “There is no way you are going to Bosnia!”
    “My problem,” I said, ignoring him, “is that I