Three seconds to self distruct.

Tuesday 3rd August 2004.

This is going to be difficult to write because it deals with three
relationships, my relationship with myself, with my son and with my
current best friend. I'm going to try and write this as fairly as
possible but sometimes, when you're angry and hurting it's hard to see
the other person's point of view. Martha edits for me, eventually she
will see this and I don't want to hurt her. I also don't want her
saying, "You lying cow, it wasn't like that at all." We have a good
friendship but it's on the line and we are both skating like a pair of
lunatics over the cracks and both trying not to be the one to cause the
ice to break leaving a bloody great chasm.

Hell, and now I don't know how to begin.

Okay, Martha started a new business almost two years ago. She has done
amazingly well, almost every business that opens in our depressed
little swamp goes to the wall within twelve months. She put a lot of
thought into what would do well here. She used her brains to find
something that would work for her. Two years on, she has money in the
bank and the business is improving all the time. However she's bored.
She works six days a week nine until five, standing in a shop that for
the most part is empty. She does a good trade but the sales she makes
could be condensed to fill maybe an hour. The rest of the time she's
trapped. We have a deal that I help her out with a few shop hours when
I can and she does all my editing for me. It gives her something to do
when she's quiet. No money changes hands on either side and it's a deal
that works well. Now then, although the business is improving, Martha
has still not been able to take a living wage out of it. She is still
benefit assisted and until six months ago didn't take any money at all
out of her shop. Now the business can stand fifty pounds a week. That
would increase with time but Martha's pissed off. She sees herself as
working all hours and coming out with very little more than when she
sat on her arse on full benefits. And this is where thing get silly.
Bear with me, there is a point to all this and in my usual longwinded
manner I'm getting there.

Going off on a completely different tack, Martha's ex husband is a
multimillionaire. He is coming close to retirement age and wants to
begin winding down his business empire with a view to handing it over
to his only daughter. Maurio's daughter is spoiled, she has taken from
Daddy all her life and given nothing in return. He has been trying for
year to get her to train into the business to succeed him when he
retires but, until recently, she wanted all the benefits of being
daddy's girl but none of the work. She has a new man in her life and
they decided they wanted to open their own business. She wouldn't go
into the family run company but still expected her dad to buy her an
independent restaurant. She didn't need to train for the job she
already knows it all! Maurio finally saw the light and put his foot
down. He told her that eventually everything he had would go to her and
the family, but only to those who are loyal to him in these next five
years when he's looking to cut his pizza into chunks and start doling
it out to his family.

J (the daughter) has finally decided to go to London and train with
daddy. But when J jumps, everybody else has to jump to her tune too.
Martha is pissed off and bored. Between them J and Maurio have talked
her into selling up, moving to J's house, miles from anywhere, to be a
nanny to her kids while J and her fella go to London to learn the
business. Maurio is going to shell out hundreds of thousands keeping
the whole entourage while this goes ahead.

And this, finally, is where I come in. One night a few weeks ago Martha
put me right on the spot. She asked me to have the shop for her when
she moves. I didn't have thinking time and said that I'd do it. Martha
doesn't own the shop it's on a lease until next February. So it means
giving up my job to look after her shop while she's away playing Mary
Poppins. I told her that I didn't want to do it and would much rather
she asked someone else. But I grudgingly said that I would do it and
wouldn't let her down. She's been a good friend to me and I wanted to
be a good friend back.

But, I have to give up my job (again), Martha can only afford to pay me
the fifty pounds a week she takes. I can't manage on that, my credit
cards and loan come to more than 2oo a month and that's without living
expenses. So she suggested doing half the week for her. If I did four
days she would travel backwards and forwards to do the other two. That
way she said I can keep my current job on as well, but I can't because
I'm on a floating rota. I do three days one week and four the next.
Only I don't because I do two rotas so I do my three days and then my
four days and then reverse the order the following week. It's
complicated but anyway, my boss won't keep causal staff, you have to
have a rota, even if it's only a small one supplemented by cover work.
It's put me in a real quandary. I've promised to do it. I can't let
Martha down but I'm in a really awkward position. I wish I'd just
thought it through and refused when she first asked me.

This is where things get silly. Last night Marty was reading through
the local paper and he saw an advert for cheap holidays. He conned me
into ringing to get some information about it. "Just some details,
mum." The next thing I knew, a pushy salesman and Marty combined did a
right number on me and I'd committed myself (on credit card) to twelve
days in bloody Spain. It's a cracking deal. Door to door from the
Dalton Swamp, luxury coaching, seven nights half board in a three star
hotel and a three day mini cruise. The cost was only four hundred and
forty nine pounds fifty for both of us. I've done really well getting
my debts down lately and if I took on a load of extra cover before the
12th September when we were due to leave, I reckon we could manage all
right. I did promise Marty a holiday abroad either back end of this
year or beginning of next and this is so easy and painless.

I can't tell you how excited Marty was. It was worth every penny just
to see him jumping around like a lunatic. I booked the holiday without
clearing work or anything but they know that I have to have time off
for my writing so I'd tell them it was a writing holiday. I could
manage an hour a day on the laptop by the pool just to stop it being a
lie. I suppose I got caught up in the excitement too without thinking
things through.

And then we came down to earth with a bump. We went around to tell
Martha our good news. She had a gob on her. She can't afford to go on
holiday and I think it pissed her off that we were going on credit. And
then she realised about the shop. "What about having the shop for me,
Sooz?"

"That's okay, you're not going until the end of September. We get back
on the 23rd."

"What the hell, gave you that Idea? I'm going before the schools go
back. I'm leaving the last week of August."

And this is where it gets a little bit sinister. I'm not sure and God
forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think Martha might be blackmailing me.
Maybe that's too strong a word but there was certainly a threat there.
I did something very wrong last year. I'm still doing something wrong
that could get me into a whole hell of a lot of trouble. I can honestly
say I've never done a dishonest thing in my life until last year. I
quit work to try and make it as a writer. I needed money, lots of money
and fast and that's when I started playing with the credit cards. I
wanted to buy a hundred copies of each of my four books. That didn't
come cheap. I needed money to live on. So, I committed credit card
fraud. I took out three credit cards, and later a large loan and a five
hundred quid overdraft. I lied through my teeth about my income to get
the cards, saying that I earned far more than I do. I know it's wrong
and I'm not even going to try and justify it but I didn't steal
anything and am keeping up the payments nicely. In fact I've paid one
card off completely, got another one down to two hundred and fifty
pounds and cleared my overdraft again this week. Well that was until I
put the holiday on it. I've also done something else bad, even worse
than that. I'm not ready to talk about it yet but the whole sorry tale
will come out one day no doubt, probably when I say, "Guilty, your
honour," in the dock. But Martha knows what I've done.

She brought it up last night and said that I'm going to get caught. I
told her that I know. Later on, before I said that I'd cancel the
holiday, she looked at me. She was joking, but it was one of those
jokes that isn't, if you know what I mean. She said, "Don't worry, I'll
get you back." I might be completely wrong. I probably am. I hope I am,
but with her mentioning what I'd done, earlier and then the tone of
voice and look on her face when she said it. I THINK there was an
underlying threat there. I have no choice but to cancel the holiday.
I'm putting off ringing the man because I don't know how much, if any,
of my money he'll refund.

I don't want to have Martha's bloody shop for her for six months. Marty
cried for hours last night. He's heartbroken. I've promised him that we
will still go, I'll just have to transfer the holiday to a later date
and we'll do the same holiday next year. It's little consolation for
him. I'm hoping that the man will keep my money and just transfer it
over to the same holiday next May. At least it's all paid for then. I'm
scared to ring up though in case I lose all the money and he won't
transfer.

I'm going to whinge now. I can't seem to do right for doing wrong. I
agreed to do a job for six months, for almost no pay, that I don't want
to do just to keep my friend happy. I got pushed into buying a holiday
that I can't afford to keep Marty happy. And in all honesty, the
thought of being on a coach with a group of strangers who may or may
not throw up scares the pants off me. I can't imagine anything worse.
But the man assures me it's the poshest coach there is and people are
very rarely travel sick on it. I just ant to keep everybody happy and
it always goes wrong. I am totally pissed off and at he end of my rope
with it all.

I made Marty sleep in my room last night because I didn't trust him on
his own. I only wanted to make him happy and now he's worse than ever.
He cried himself to sleep last night and says that he hates me. I don't
blame him.

Martha and I are going to London on Friday and there's the most
horrible tension between us. I know we need to thrash things out and
clear the air but I don't know if we'll have a friendship left at the
end of it. I suppose I'm holding off doing anything at all about the
holiday in the hope that Martha will find somebody else to have her
shop. But she won't. Her other daughter has a mortgage to pay and can't
afford to give up her job to have the shop and there's nobody else that
Martha trusts enough to do it. I know I'm dreading being stuck in that
shop even only for four days a week, for six months. I think it's
asking too much of our friendship, but I promised to do it and the
arrangements have all been made. If I back out now then it messes up,
Martha and the whole chain of people that if affects. And yet if I do
it it's going to bring my whole fragile house of financial cards down.
Why the hell didn't I just say no when she first asked me. I knew then
it was unviable and now I'm trapped.

Would my friend really tell the police or whichever relevant authority
what I've done? How can I even think that of her? But the threat when
she said, "I'll get you back," seemed so charged with menace. Maybe she
was just annoyed. And I've told her I'll cancel the holiday now so it
should be okay. It hurts me though. I never wanted to let her down. I
haven't let her down, I'm cancelling the bloody holiday today because I
feel bullied into it. But hat did she mean by that. I'm going to have
to ask her. You know, if someone plays a practical joke and you say,
"I'll get you back," it's funny. This wasn't said like that. There was
no joke. She laughed when she said it but it seemed nasty and
malicious. I'd never do anything to purposely hurt or inconvenience
her. I changed my plans when she told me the actual date that she's
leaving the holiday was just a misunderstanding because she hadn't been
clear about when she wanted me to have the shop.

I'm going to have to put my notice in at work today. I don't want to. I
thought it was all ages way yet, but it isn't and if I'm going to be
fair to my current boss, I'm going to have to give her plenty of
notice. But it's less than a month now. Will I get paid my wages if I
don't give a full months notice?

Bugger my life is shit.

And the worst thing is that I built Marty's hopes up and then took it
all away from him again. We will have that holiday, just not now. I
only bought the holiday to try and make it up to him for being such a
crap mother and not doing anything with him this summer holidays. We
will go early next year. Who the hell am I trying to convince?

Dear Diary, if you have any help, advice or words of wisdom to impart
on this one I'd love to hear them because I don't know what the hell
I'm going to do.

I quit smoking last Wednesday night. I've done almost a week without a
smoke.