My heart beat triple time, and I wondered what on earth had possessed me. I’d teetered on the verge of letting him go, really I had, but the thought of him walking out of my flat and not returning – even though he’d said he had nowhere else to stay – wasn’t something I could handle right now. Not when I’d had a taste of what things could be like if he was here as a permanent fixture. So I pretended he wasn’t calling me, wasn’t getting angrier by the second, and went to gaze at the paintings on the wall in my office-cum-studio. The scarves would hold him in place until I returned, I was sure, and, confident I could work in peace once he stopped shouting, I squirted paint onto my palette and selected a brush. It wasn’t difficult to get into that dream state I entered when doing my art. The imaginative side of me took over, sending me into a time warp where nothing existed except what I was creating – dips and swirls, hard or fuzzy lines over impressive swoops. I imagined Liuz tied up on the bed, his face contorted in the agony of pleasure, not the irritation and possible anger he was feeling now, and transferred what was in my head onto the wall.
