and no way out, I guess, for the sweet French doctor
and whatever he has down there.
Buried.
I was buried, too –
sealed into that basement, Ava – for one year.
Listening to the well-lit lives upstairs – their
muffled voices, furniture shifting, the heavy shuffle of that
sour man –
I shudder
at the thought of it –
and the spiders, Ava,
the biggest that I’ve ever seen
and brazen,
a thin hand shifting on the pillow by
my head.
It made me ill – that flat,
I know this
because while living there I watched
a lot of one specific television programme –
obsessively.
A programme where a sturdy bloke bought
antiques from France and sold them back in England.
I’m not sure how many hours of this I watched.
A lot, Ava. Too much.
Each episode was the same –
he’d go to France in a big green truck, trawl
the markets, shops, house clearances – then drive the
things he’d bought back home, where he’d sell them for
a profit.
Oh I actively disliked it, Ava – hated him a bit in
fact – especially the way he shook hands on a deal, then
looked directly at the camera and said BOSH!
I had no interest in antiques
no interior aspirations,
but
for whatever reason, in that concrete coffin
of a room, curtain drawn across the door, across the day,
no company but for the occasional tiny arms of those
portentous twins next door – I’d watch and watch and
watch this man buy and sell and buy and sell
