Their house, number 9, is almost identical to numbers 8 and 10. White stucco, terracotta tiles leading up to the door. Palm trees on either side of the porch. Perfect green lawn, even in this scorching heat. I guess hosepipe bans don’t apply when you live in a compound away from normal society. I take my foot off the pedal and roll by, but there’s nothing to see really. There’s nobody in sight on these wide avenues, not a dog walker or a mother and buggy. All this money, and it can only buy silence. I appreciate silence, by the way. You don’t grow up on a main road in London and not dream of the day you might live in a home without hearing your neighbours alternately having angry sex and or sobbing to the soundtrack of Les Misérables. But this calm is artificial – it feels flat and dull, as though made for people who wanted to create an environment which completely denied the loud reality of human life. The Artemises choice of house only tells me about them in so far as it tells me nothing. It’s a house which was built for rich people who don’t care about design but really value security and status. Did Lynn and Brian buy a house in this compound? Well then let’s buy a bigger one. That’s it. There’s no nod to personality, there’s no activity – only sanitised conformity. I leave feeling rather depressed. I share DNA with these people, will I too one day hanker after beige carpets and a maid I can mistreat? I guess a maid would be nice, but I think I’d find their inevitable sadness a bit oppressive. I imagine it’s a bonus for Kathleen though. Someone who is more miserable than her, in full view every day.
From the compound, I travel to the casino, which is about a thirty-minute drive along a fairly hairy road. A cliff edge on one side heads down towards a … gorge? A ravine? I don’t know. As I said, I grew up on a main road and I’ve always had what I feel is a healthy suspicion of big open spaces. The countryside baffles me, and anywhere that takes thirty minutes by car isn’t somewhere I’d waste my time going if I was at home. Sometimes I get the urge to have a quick meeting with a man （I mean sex, lower your eyebrows）， or just waste my time mindlessly scrolling on dating apps. I flick through chancers posing in front of BMWs, as if that’s a sign that they’ve ‘made it’ instead of a clear indication that they are stupid enough to think that hire purchase makes good financial sense. But a tacky car and a V-neck T-shirt aren’t necessarily complete no-nos. I’m not going to be spending my life with these men, after all. I don’t even care enough to commit their names to memory. But I do have a firm line in the sand. If you’re more than a couple of kilometres away, it’s not happening. My mood is fleeting, and I’m not waiting for you to change at King’s Cross, or text to say the Overground has been replaced by a fleet of buses because of essential repairs. So the Spanish countryside is an alien world to me, and fuck it, the cliff leads to a ravine. Whatever you’d call it, it’s a long drop and the cliffside is covered in gnarly-looking bushes. Plus there isn’t a soul to be seen on this route. Perfect. The sun is out, and the warm breeze hits my arm as I balance it on the door while I drive. I turn on the radio, and the local station is playing the Beach Boys. ‘God Only Knows’ fills the little rental car, as I slowly hug the road and make my way towards the casino. I don’t believe in God, obviously. We live in a time of science and the Kardashians, so I think I’m safely in the sane camp there. But also, any god with real clout wouldn’t have paired me with these people and given me such a calling. So no God. But I do feel like someone is smiling down on me today.
While I’m on God, there’s a story in the Bible （I mean, it’s not in the Bible, I heard it in a film and it involves modern technology）， which goes something like this: A man lives in a little house very happily for years, until one day, the emergency services knock on his door and say, ‘Sir, there’s a storm coming, we need to evacuate.’ And the man says, ‘Thank you, gentlemen, but I’m religious, I have faith. God will save me.’ The men leave and the storm comes. The waters rise around his house, and a boat comes past. ‘Sir,’ says the captain, ‘come with us, the water will only rise.’ But the man says ‘Thank you, gentlemen, but I’m religious, I have faith. God will save me.’ Later on, the man has to climb to his roof as the house floods. A helicopter hovers overhead. ‘Sir, climb up this ladder, we can get you to safety.’ The man waves them away. ‘Thank you, gentlemen, but I’m religious, I have faith. God will save me.’ Later on, the man drowns. When he gets to heaven, he meets God, and says, ‘Father, I had faith, I believed in you, I stayed true. Why did you let me drown?’ And God looks exasperated （and why wouldn’t he, this man is an idiot）， and says, ‘David, I sent you the emergency services, a boat, and a helicopter. Why are you here??’