I spear a piece of chicken and put it into my mouth. ‘What is it you are aiming for?’

He puts down his fork. ‘I want to make art that means something.’

I look at him blankly.

‘Do you know anything about art?’

I shake my head. ‘My knowledge of art starts and ends with recognition of the Mona Lisa as one of the greatest paintings.’

‘The destruction of art began in 1917 when an ignorant Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp, re-orientated a urinal ninety degrees from its normal position and called it art. It was actually a challenge from an anti-art advocate. Art, he was saying, is meant to be pissed on, but the fools who act as gatekeepers in the art world turned around and embraced the urinal, saw beauty where there should have been none.’

My eyebrows rise. ‘Really? A urinal was considered art?’

‘With that one move he turned the experience of art away from a quest for beauty into a sense of distaste. The viewer is presented with something ugly, tasteless, depressing and empty of any technical skill, and asked to admire it. If he cannot then he must be an intellectual philistine. To make it in the new art world all the artist had to do was can his own excrement, submerge a crucifix in his own urine; saw a calf in half, pickle it in brine, and exhibit it in a glass case; stud a skull with diamonds, or liquidize goldfish in blenders. So modern art became a smirking, degenerate thing whose sole purpose seems to be to trivialize or destroy.

‘But the truth is real beauty is rare, and producing it even harder. Far from being an old-fashioned idea, beauty has the ability to tantalize and crush. Humans have an intense response to beauty. In all aspects of life we worship it: people, fashion, photography, homes, nature, films. We are even obsessed. My aim is simple. I want to create dangerous beauty.’

I stare at him, his passion. He seems beautiful beyond what I thought. At that moment I admire him. Am I like that with flowers? Maybe. No. Definitely not. I love flowers, but I could easily live without them. The search for the perfect arrangement does not consume me. I have quite happily sent out flower arrangements that were not the best that I could do. I have never destroyed even a mediocre arrangement. Ziporrah would kill me if I did. He, on the other hand, is committed to producing something great, and until he does he will not rest.

‘You really love your art, don’t you?’

‘Art is the only thing that has ever taken me away from the bullshit. They can take away all my possessions, but they can never take away my art.’

‘So how do you make money to live then?’

‘I had a small amount of money left to me. Blake manages it for me.’ And then he closes over, and I wish I had not asked him about money. He was beautiful when he was talking about art.

After dinner we put the dishes in the dishwasher and Vann feeds Smith. Afterwards he turns to me. ‘Ready to be ravished?’

I grin. ‘Since I walked through the door.’

He takes my hand and starts running to the bedroom with me following and laughing. In the bedroom he stops. ‘I want a striptease.’

I start unbuttoning my top and then I have to laugh. This is just not me.

‘When you take your clothes off, have a plan. Don’t fuck around.’

‘That’s easy for you to say, you’re not doing it.’

‘Do you want me to?’

I jump on the bed and lie with my hands linked behind my head. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Vann Wolfe will be taking his clothes off now.’

Looking into my eyes he grasps the edges of his T-shirt and pulls it over his head, his head flowing back gracefully, challengingly. I whistle. Ignoring me he tugs his boots and tosses them behind him. I raise an eyebrow to distract him, but he smiles and nods as if to say, I know your game.

He rolls his socks, one at a time, down, and eases them off. Then he points his toes away from me, twists his torso and unbuckles his brown leather belt. Pulls it through the loops and lets it dangle from one finger. By now you’d think I’d be holding my belly, splitting my sides from laughing, but no. I am in thrall.

Already I can feel his pulse as he sinks his cock deep into me.

He grasps the button next. The zip peels away. A white bulge. The faded jeans slide down, down, down. My pussy starts to quietly sob. He turns to face me. Doesn’t pose or anything. Just stands there, panther-like, in his jockeys. I try to look for imperfections. Is he too broad? No. His hips too narrow? Nope. Hair too long? Possibly. But in the end any imperfections only make for his perfection and I am throbbing with excitement. Unsustainable psychedelic jolts are shooting through my body, paralyzing me. I know how this unfolds. It unfolds in a tangle of limbs with me being speared right between the legs. But it’s the waiting that’s the killer.

‘What are you waiting for? Take it off.’ My voice sounds like a sleep time purr.

He vaults onto the bed suddenly, startling me. I squeal inelegantly.

He leans back against the pillow, his hands behind his neck. ‘Some things have to be earned.’

A rush of pure lust floods me. The ripples keep on happening. ‘No kidding,’ I say and peel his underwear off.

His eyes flare with excitement. Like a parrot that is offered a peanut. I lick his cock like it is a melting ice cream, upwards. His cock is thick, salty, satin on my tongue. I like that. A calorie-free treat. That’s a mental tattoo. A voice in my head. Keep it light and sexy, Sugar. I wrap my lips over it and swirl my tongue around it.

‘I wish I could be your angel.’

That’s heavy stuff. ‘Why?’

‘Make you see.’

‘See what?’

‘Never mind. We’re not on the same page.’

That’s fine then. I don’t want to talk. There is a storm in my pussy trying to find its way home.

Then I go back to mindlessly sucking thick, salty satin. When he flips me over and does his thing, and the release comes, it is insanity in a bucket.

Ciao, everybody.

Twenty-two

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

—Vincent Van Gogh

When the urge hits you, it’s hard to resist. That afternoon on the way to Vann’s it hits me. I speed-walk to Tesco, grabbing two packets of crisps from the newsagents on the way, because I can’t wait that long to shove something down my gullet. I whizz around the supermarket almost in a panic, piling my basket with anything at all that takes my eye. I have everything I fancy. And I mean everything.

The woman at the checkout, an old dear, smiles. ‘Having a party?’

Grasping my plastic bag, I hurry as fast as I can to Vann’s flat. I get in and it is quiet. He is working upstairs. I know he will not come out for hours yet. I sit at the dining room table and, opening my stash, I begin to gorge. Quickly, as if I am in a race. Stuffing my mouth, hardly chewing, swallowing. Savoury followed by sweet, sweet followed by savoury, savoury followed by sweet. I race through the food. Racing. Racing. When I am almost full I relax. I eye the food left over on the table. There is still more space inside me. I indulge again. Until I am so stuffed I can hardly breathe. I relax. The panic has gone…

Instead I feel a sick smugness, a delicious comfort that I can actually get away with eating a whole pack of biscuits, half a chocolate fudge cake, an entire box of cream cakes, half a tub of ice cream, five packets of crisps, half a cold pizza and cheese macaroni. I can have the last laugh.

I go to the tap and drink as much water as I can. Then I go to the bathroom, hang my head over the toilet bowl and reverse all that damage. I am sitting on the floor, tears in my eyes, the disgusting smell of my own vomit rising around me, when the door opens and Vann is standing there. For a while he says nothing, simply looks at me.