Portobello

'Perhaps,' Ella said. 'I don't know.'

'Are you a GP?' When she nodded again he said, 'I haven't got a doctor. I mean, I'm not on a doctor's list. Of course, I've got doctors in here, lots of them. Do you take private patients?'

Ella tried not to let her astonishment show. 'I have two or three friends who come to me privately.'

'When I get out of here could I be your private patient? My pa will pay, there won't be any difficulty about that.'

Nonplussed, she said, 'You don't know me, Mr Roseman. Perhaps you should wait until you get home before you make decisions like that. I'll give you my card and you can phone me if you want to.'

Joel Roseman took a long time reading the card. He took his sunglasses off, put them on again, turning the card over, rereading it. He put it in his jeans pocket, handling it more carefully than he had the cheque. 'I won't tell you what's wrong with me now if you don't mind. That can keep till I'm your patient. You'll think it strange, I know you will, but it's all absolutely true.'

She got up, sure she would never see him again. 'Goodbye. I hope all goes well for you.'

'I'll tell you when next we meet,' he said.

Going into a Tesco Express in Kensington High Street for a pint of semi-skimmed milk, he had come upon a metal rack in front of the counter crammed full of packets of Chocorange and Strawpink. He stood in front of them, contemplating them sadly. It was too late. Tesco of all places, Tesco, which he had always affected to despise! How happy this discovery would have made him a week ago. This meant it wasn't only in this Express but surely in all, in all the main stores too and the Metros including the one in the Portobello Road, a stone's throw away. And such an impersonal place too, five bored-looking mechanical youngsters lined up behind the checkout, indifferent to what customers bought or didn't buy. He took a packet off the shelf, put it into his basket, then put it back again. Quickly he turned away and took his milk up to the checkout.

Once out of the shop, he began to regret not taking the Chocorange with him. Surely he could have taken one packet, made it last two days or three. It was harmless, after all. He wasn't talking about crack cocaine, for God's sake. But he didn't go back to the Tesco Express. He comforted himself with selfcongratulation. It was three days now that he had been without a Chocorange and it had been bearable. There was a lot to be said for not having the things in the house, for he knew that, even if he had put a packet on top of a cupboard he would need a ladder to reach, he would have fetched that ladder and climbed it. Best not to put temptation in his way and this thought brought him a kind of euphoria that lasted for most of the afternoon, enduring even when the man who came in regularly to walk up to the Rothko, eye it, finger its frame but postpone any decision he might make about it, returned for the last time to say he had definitely decided against it.

Dorinda was wrathful. 'These people have the most colossal nerve. And there's absolutely nothing one can do.'

'Nothing at all,' said Eugene. 'It's time we changed the window. We could try some of those minor Pre- Raphaelites. Well, maybe two. The girl walking with her baby in the woods, I think, and the woman waiting for the lifeboat to come back. Oh, and that famille noire vase. Jackie can do it.'

Look at the upside of your self-denial, he told himself. There will be no more pretending you've a sore throat or you've been eating a chocolate. No more removing the thing from your mouth in a tissue when a potential customer comes in. The days of never passing a pharmacy without wondering if they stock the things, those are gone. Secrecy is past. A small voice somewhere inside him said, 'But you like secrecy, it's what you do.'

Now, for instance, as he chose two paintings among the Pre-Raphaelites, taking a long time over whether he preferred the girl and her baby or the wounded soldier and his wife, he told himself that at least he no longer had to fear Jackie's observant eye when she spotted the telltale bulge in his cheek. He carried the painting into the window, moved the Chinese vase a little off-centre and sent her to find a length of yellow damask to drape an easel.

The craving had suddenly become very bad. He took a deep breath, which made Jackie turn to look at him. 'Are you OK, Eugene?'

'I'm fine,' he said.

Leaving her to finish, he went into the little kitchen at the back of the gallery and filled a glass with water from the tap. Water sometimes helped, but not this time. There was nothing to be done but bear it. He walked home, telling himself that he had been shut into a prison but there was a door to his cell that he had opened by exerting willpower. He should be proud of himself. He had said no and walked past those shops. He had put his hands in his pockets, turned his head away and walked past. Perhaps he should tell Ella. He could tell her now he had given up. But wouldn't it be better and wiser to keep his addiction and his conquest of it a secret?

Once in the house, he thought how only a few days before he would have put six packets into the secret drawer in the kitchen, four into the carved drawer in the black oak table and the rest into various pockets in his coats and jackets, keeping one out for dipping into during the course of the evening. No longer. The feeling of deprivation was profound, a sensation of emptiness and that nothing he might do could be of any value. A vast interminable evening stretched ahead of him, unrelieved by a secret helping himself to a Chocorange while Ella was in the kitchen or having a bath.

The doorbell rang.

He wasn't expecting anyone and for a brief moment his thoughts went to the young man without a name who had tried to claim the hundred and fifteen pounds. But why should he come back? Eugene went to the door.

A man in an orange day-glo anorak over dirty jeans stood on the step, his face convulsed with anger. In his left hand he was carrying a lightweight aluminium stepladder. 'I could have the law on you,' he shouted when Eugene opened the door. 'You're lucky I haven't got on to the police already.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' Eugene said.

'You didn't borrow my steps from my building site in Pembridge Crescent? Oh, no. You didn't have the bloody nerve to leave them stuck up against your house. You don't know a fucking thing about it, do you?'

'Well, no, I don't. I've never seen that – that ladder before.'

The builder flapped his right hand in a gesture of despair, said, 'Bloody toffee-nosed creep,' and retreated down the steps, carrying his stepladder. When he was out of sight, Eugene went up to the side gate where the steps had apparently been. If they had been there earlier he wasn't much surprised that he hadn't noticed them. He wasn't particularly observant of domestic detail and usually attributed this deficiency, if deficiency it was, to his mind being on higher things. He felt the side gate and noted that it was locked. Was it possible that Carli his cleaner had helped herself to the stepladder and left it there? It seemed unlikely and unwise to ask her. She might take offence and leave, and then where would he be?

He couldn't have a Chocorange, so he decided to calm his disturbed nerves with a drink. It surely proved his addiction wasn't as intense as he had feared. A real addict would need his fix more than any possible substitute. A large gin with a little drop of tonic worked wonders. He reclined on the raspberry-coloured chaise longue, admiring his surroundings. His beautiful furniture, exquisite porcelain and glass, and his carefully chosen extravagantly draped curtains always calmed him and put him in a good mood.

He sighed and thought of Ella who would be along when her evening surgery ended in ten minutes' time. Tonight he would take her somewhere especially nice for dinner but, before that, over another gin for himself and a dry sherry for her – but no, it should be champagne. He went off to the kitchen to put a bottle of Moet on ice. Before that, as the soft late-spring dusk began to close in, he would propose. Her perpetual presence in his house would be the best inhibitor of his dependency he could think of. He had given up, he told himself. It was over and now was the time to make this major change in his life. The sight of her lovely face daily across the breakfast table and nightly at drinks time, would keep him on the straight and narrow… Keep him? There was no question of his lapsing. Not now. He had got over the first day, the second and the third. Those were the first steps that counted.

She arrived a little sooner than he expected, looking almost prettier than he remembered. She should always wear dresses, he thought, dresses of floral silk with that crossover neckline effect, so flattering and sexy on a woman with a large bosom. He hadn't got a ring but they could buy one together tomorrow and no expense should be spared.

'My darling, champagne for us this evening. Will that be nice?'

'Lovely,' said Ella. 'But I have to tell you about Mr Roseman and the cheque first.'

'Oh, no, please, spare me. I'm sure you did it all perfectly. You always do everything perfectly.'

Ella laughed. 'Just as you like. Why the champagne?'