The Morning After

It was 9 a.m. on Sunday morning. I’d had –maybe – 15 minutes’ sleep, my hair had turned into some monster of indeterminate shape and nature that had no place on anyone’s head, and my mouth, out of which oozed morning breath, was surrounded by a flakey patch of stubble rash. Freddie was still trying to kiss me which meant that, for the moment at least, I was kind of happy, but also increasingly embarrassed. ‘Noooo’, I whined, ‘I have to brush my teeth now and go to my room.’ ‘No you don’t’, Freddie contradicted unsympathetically. ‘Well. You might need to brush your teeth.’ He relaxed his grip on me and grinned, running his hand over his annoyingly still nice hair. ‘Bring my toothbrush and a mug of water when you come back, I’ve got dog breath too.’

‘I’m not COMING back,’ I insisted grumpily, irrationally annoyed by his comment on my breath, even though I’d started it, and wishing he’d stop looking at my awful morning face. Any minute now he’d say I had bags under my eyes. There was a pause. ‘What is this crap about going to your room?’ Freddie asked, also grumpily, grin vanishing. Oh dear. Things were souring dreadfully fast. I sat up and looked at the duvet pattern. He has a horrible duvet. Why would I sleep with a man with such a nasty duvet? I wondered. And then, is it normal to question one’s sexual encounters based on their taste in bed linen? ‘What are Laura and Jamie going to think if they see me coming out of your room?’ I asked him, because that really was the reason I was so hell bent on getting out of there. ‘Who cares?’ he sighed. ‘They’re going to find out sooner or later, if it keeps happening, aren’t they?’

Oh god. And there it was. ‘If it keeps happening’. What did that mean? Did that mean ‘it’s going to keep happening as far as I’m concerned, is that alright with you?’ – in which case, was the appropriate response ‘yes, I guess so. Now let me get your toothpaste’? (Was it ok to be getting his toothbrush anyway? Oh GOD, the overthinking.) Or did it mean, ‘maybe I’ll want to shag you all night again some other time. Or maybe not’, in which case how was I going to not cry in front of him? Oh god, Alice, I thought, what have you done? What is Cora going to say? When is Neenee going to show up again? Did he even break up with her? HORROR and PAIN.

There was another pause while I debated whether or not it would be acceptable to remark that I didn’t want to be asked what was going on between the two of us before I knew myself. I decided it wasn’t, mostly because I am a huge coward, and tried to get up to get to my clothes, which lay in a guilty pile next to the door. ‘Ally’, he growled, restraining me, ‘I like you. Quite a lot.’ ‘Really?’ I murmured childishly, blushing. ‘Yeah. I’ve wanted to get you in here ever since I moved in.’ I tried to play with my hair, which is the accepted female response to acute joy/acute embarrassment but the beast on my head was having none of it.

In spite of this, Freddie tried to kiss me again, which hurt the stubble rash. ‘Ow. Freddie. If it IS happening again you’re going to have to shave.’ He prodded my red chin and smirked. ‘Yeah. You better put some of your Yin Yangy stuff on this bit.’ He let me go. ‘Toothbrush’, he said again, into the pillow he was burying his stubbly face in as I dressed. ‘Ok, ok,’ I muttered, wondering what was wrong with the clothes I’d pulled on and then realizing that my Elle McPherson Intimates bra was missing. ‘Freddie, is my bra in your bed?’ He peered at me uncertainly for a moment and then started laughing, which was adorable and annoying. Oh GOD this was confusing. ‘Whaaaaat?’ I moaned. ‘It’s on the sofa, babe,’ he said, still laughing, ‘and so is my shirt. They know. Just come back now.’ I kicked his jeans out of the way and opened the bedroom door.

‘Alice?’ Laura and Jamie were standing on the landing at the other end of the corridor, outside my open bedroom door. Laura was holding my bra and Freddie’s shirt. ‘We were just wondering where you were,’ Laura began, sounding oddly defensive. ‘But I guess now we know’, Jamie finished, starting to laugh. Laura’s face fell. ‘Oh Alice. You DIDN’T.’ ‘I heard that’, shouted Freddie from the dark pit of his room. ‘Why are you even UP?’ I wailed. ‘What time did you get HOME?’ Jamie just laughed and Laura just gaped. The door opened behind me and Freddie’s arm was suddenly around my waist. ‘Morning, chaps’, he called to the others, kissing me robustly on the cheek, and then marching past them to the bathroom. ‘Ally’, he bawled, over the sound of running water ‘I’m throwing away your toothbrush again. You can use mine.’ Impossible. The man is impossible.

---

Oh dear. I was going to tell you all about the last couple of weeks too, but I’ve run out of time. I'll get back to you in the next couple of days. But in answer to all your questions…

YES.

FINALLY

It’s been about a month since I last wrote, and various things have changed since then. Firstly, Mad Mary (hell-boss) has started seeing her on-off boyfriend, evidently Madder Michael again. The advantages of this are that her copious reserves of hatred are routinely directed at him rather than at me, and that she leaves the office ridiculously early every day to make elaborate – and probably revolting – dinners for him. The disadvantages, apart from the extra workload produced by her romance-driven slacking, are that each morning as I arrive, and then every time I go anywhere near her pit of an office, she grips my arm in her hateful, vice-like claws and proceeds to spew out a coffee-scented torrent of verbal vomit about the sex she and Mental Michael had the previous night, interspersed with alarmingly vitriolic remarks about his obsessive behaviour and unappealing personality, and punctuated with snorting ejaculations of snot into an already damp-looking Kleenex. When I started work here, I thought Michael was a monster, so vicious was Mary’s criticism of him, but since then I’ve realised the man is a saint.

Secondly, I got rid of Alan. Or, rather, he got rid of me, about two weeks ago. ‘Alice,’ he intoned sorrowfully on the phone at 7.45 am - a strange time for breakups in my opinion, but what can one expect from a City Boy? - ‘I don’t know what you think of this, but I don’t feel like there’s much point in us meeting up tonight. I don’t really feel that this is going anywhere. You seem very emotionally distant to me – ‘(I rolled my eyes at Freddie, who was ironing, typically topless, while I tried to eat my cornflakes without alerting Alan to the activity with crunching) – ‘and perhaps you have some problems you need to resolve.’ I drew breath to thank him for his no-doubt excellent advice, but he wasn’t even close to finishing. ‘I’ve asked around and a colleague recommended a really excellent therapist, so if you’re interested in exploring that route I can give you her number.’ (Cornflakes and milk suddenly back in the bowl in shock-related spitting incident). Long silence. On the phone: ‘Alice?’ From the ironing board: ‘Ally?’ From the cornflake dropper: ‘You think I need to see a therapist?’ Alan: ‘I think we all need to talk to people sometimes –‘ Alice: ‘I just don’t think that we were right for each other, so –‘ Phone removed from my fingers. Freddie: ‘Fuck off, tosspot.’ End of phone call. End of Alan.

Thirdly, Freddie finally disposed of Neenee, which was almost a shame, because I’d almost started to like her. She came over one evening and mentioned having read Twilight. ‘You look like how I imagined Bella before I saw the film’, she told me shyly. ‘Thank you! You’re actually sort of like Alice Cullen’, I squealed, more in reference to her weird urge to ‘style’ everyone than anything else. Her hand fluttered excitedly to her chest ‘Oh Ally!’ she tittered, ‘That’s so totally sweet of you. I, like, MODEL myself on her.’ Freddie had grimaced. ‘You model yourself on a vampire.’ he muttered, surprising me with his Cullen knowledge, ‘Sounds about right’. Neenee smirked and poked him in the ribs.

The following Saturday he came back from an evening out with her. ‘How was Neenee?’ I’d asked, pausing the not-particularly-good X-Factor auditionee that ITV was allowing me to inflict on myself. He sat down next to me and confiscated the remote control. ‘Yeah, well. Over.’ I leant away to look at him. (Trying not to smile) ‘What?’ ‘I broke up with her’, he elaborated, ‘she was mental.’ ‘Oh’, I responded, speechless. ‘You watching this crap?’ he asked, nodding at the TV. ‘Yes…’ I said. ‘Fair enough.’ He pressed play, and put his arm round me. ‘Good Lord he smells good,’ I thought, breathing in deeply and wondering if he could feel my heart beating. His arm tightened around my shoulders. Bliss.

Half an hour later, as Dermot O’Leary wrapped up the show, I realised Freddie had begun to execute the well-known Accidental Breast Brush with his left hand. I leant against him permissively. ‘Oh, Ally’, he piped up, leaning away alarmingly, ‘I got you something.’ He poked around in his bag and then plonked a tub of Yin Yang ‘Rich Skin Food’ on my lap. ‘I told my sister about your moisturizer because she’s always on about her spots and then she got this and when we were talking about you’ – my mouth fell slightly open – ‘she said she’d tried this and you’d like it. So…there you go.’

There was an awkward moment as I looked at it, and then looked at him, and thought, in one of those surreal moments of clarity, how absurd it was that I was interpreting this metrosexual outburst as a declaration of, if not love, then at least extreme liking. I braced myself for his getting off the sofa and disappearing to bed with a patronizing pat on my head. Then I realised that one of his hands was on my knee, with no intention of withdrawing judging by the firm grip, and the other, the one that had been involved in the Breast Brush, was still sort of around my shoulders and playing with my hair. I looked at him, and blushed at the eye contact and looked at the floor, and then at him again, and then said, oddly, ‘Freddie…have you been drinking?’ (What is the MATTER with me?) Knee-hand sliding to thigh with a faintly lascivious chuckle. ‘Actually, no.’ Hand tangling distractingly in my hair, pulling my head back slightly. ‘Oh’ – breathless – ‘Freddie…what…’

Kiss.

‘This is a really bad idea’, I muttered desperately as he dragged me into his bedroom an indeterminate time period later, clothes and feelings in utter disarray. He laughed and kicked the door closed.

So…I THINK we’re seeing each other. Now THIS is a really bad idea...

The Homecoming

Well, Freddie’s home. He walked in with his personally moulded backpack and slightly peeling skin a few days after we’d expected him, and shortly after I’d got home. From a date. A fifth date. With the datee. We were sitting on the sofa and I was giggling, as one often does on dates with passably attractive men, at a joke that wasn’t really all that funny. Freddie walked in, bare-armed, weighed down with baggage (literal and probably metaphorical), looking tired and tanned and like he needed a shower and a haircut. It was fortunate that I wasn’t standing up or I might have swooned. I am officially a pathetic female. And to think I’d persuaded myself that I was over Freddie and falling for dire Datee, with his door-opening, chair-pulling, jacket-taking good manners. Vom.

So, after a momentary pause, I recovered enough to launch myself from the sofa, squealing his name with Neeneeish glee and fling my arms round him, breathing ‘Oh God, I’m SO glad you’re home’ into his sweaty, manly neck. He squeezed me until breathing anything, even endearments, was no longer an option, said ‘I missed you too’ and then held me away to look at me. My heart thumped as his left hand slid gently down my waist to my hip, and his right hand cupped my chin and cheek and tilted my face up to his. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Ally’, he muttered and, as we both forgot the regrettable presence of Datee, my eyes fluttered shut and –

Oh, alright, FINE, it never happened. I just realised as I shuffled hurriedly away from Dateee and gazed in breathless, heart-pounding adoration at Freddie, that the above was exactly what I WANTED to happen. Really, I couldn’t do anything very much at all, until Freddie broke the awkward silence with ‘Hello, Ally’, and put down the giant backpack. He stood rubbing his shoulder - which made me quiver and yearn to offer him a massage – come ON, girl, get a grip - and glanced between me and Datee with an uncertain smile.

‘Freddie! Hi!’ I gasped, sounding embarrassed and hostile, and got up to greet him. My attempt at a hug was made deeply awkward by his effort to kiss me on the cheek, ending in an uncomfortable, nervous-laughterish pause and a brushing of lips that, whilst tantalising, was also gut-wrenchingly embarrassing, the more-so as I could tell that he was staring at Datee the whole time. Ugh, how I LOATHED myself for letting him talk me into letting him into the house. Death.

Datee, meanwhile, had risen from the sofa himself, and come to hover near our miserable, unsatisfying reunion. ‘Hi’, he semi-shouted, apparently his tone of choice, incidentally – ‘Alan.’ As he said it I realised what I’d found attractive about him; he reminded me of Alex the Wanker Banker, which wasn’t entirely surprising. Alan is a management consultant, which is the same breed of man, just a bit slimier, I’ve always thought.

‘Hi’, replied Freddie warily, stepping forward slightly so that he was alongside me, our arms touching, in the hallway. I leaned shamelessly in against him, smiling stupidly just because he was there. I knew that I ought to be somehow taking advantage of the whole thing to make him jealous, but alas, such cunning seems beyond me. I could only formulate increasingly desperate strategies to pretend that Alan was really just a friend and get him out of there because the idea of Freddie thinking he had competition was inexplicably horrendous.

‘You a friend of Ally’s?’ Freddie prompted, and my stomach contracted. ‘Yes –‘ I squealed hopefully, but Alan was quicker and, unsurprisingly, louder. ‘We’re seeing each other,’ he claimed decisively and erroneously, without so much as a glance in my direction. ‘Are you’, Freddie replied, obviously not expecting an answer. He wound his arm around my waist. ‘Lucky man’, he remarked, and squeezed. I wriggled free, feeling wretched.

‘Ya, I guess so’, Alan said, with laugh that tried hard not to sound annoyed. ‘So you’re –sorry, was it Jamie?’ Freddie reached down for his bag. ‘That’s the other one, mate. You met Laura yet? She’s nice.’ He smiled pleasantly. ‘No, no,’ Alan said, more casually, ‘just you.’ Freddie grinned wolfishly, mystifyingly pleased. ‘Sure…and has Ally given you the grand tour of the house yet?’ This was weird. Were they going to be friends now? Not good. ‘I think she’s planning to do that later,’ Alan said, which annoyed me, because I had no such intent and it sounded lascivious. I cleared my throat. ‘Alan, it’s kind of late already, sorry not to have shown you round earlier, I didn’t think…’ – all the while wondering if it was rude to invite someone in and not give them a tour – was this some strange piece of etiquette I’d somehow missed in my childhood? – ‘….anyway, maybe another time.’

He frowned. Freddie nodded. ‘Shame,’ he commiserated, ‘it’s a great place. Ally’s got the best bedroom, I think. Kind of wish it was mine.’ I stared at him, because that was a lie, more or less. Alan stared too. ‘I doubt she’ll swap,’ he said, weirdly. ‘Nnooo, I don’t suppose I will. Although Freddie’s room is also lovely and he’s made it look very nice’, I babbled frantically, ‘now, Freddie, if you want to have a shower do you think you could go now because I’m going to need one too, and I want to go to bed soonish. We were just saying goodnight, weren’t we Alan?’ Freddie ruffled my hair with his free hand. ‘Sure thing, babe, I’ll give you a shout when I’m done’.

Alan peered up the stairs after him, and then turned to me. ‘So, that’s Freddie’, I said nervously, ‘he’s sometimes sort of protective, so – ‘ I got no further. Alan grabbed me with unexpected skill and force and kissed me. Also unexpectedly, I found myself kissing him back, and remembering all the things I liked about him. And then he broke off to say, ‘So…how about the tour?’ as though the thing was a certainty. ‘Um, NO,’ I snapped, outraged, wondering how I’d feel about it if Freddie hadn’t just come home looking like a ruffled God, and not especially liking the answer to that question, ‘no, it’s late and I’m tired. I’ll call you tomorrow. I’m sorry about – I didn’t know Freddie was home today, so…’

He left. Twenty minutes later, Neenee knocked on the door. ‘Lissy-wissy!’ she trilled as she brushed past me.

God, I’m so stupid.

The Good, the Bad, and the Belatedly Fugly: Part 3, The Fugly

So, cast your mind back to the last time I wrote. I was wandering happily away from the house, head full of Freddie, off to have a picnic in the park with Cora. Belatedly, here comes the Fugly part…

‘Oh NO!’ Cora said suddenly, looking despairingly over my shoulder as I nibbled tortilla chips and guacamole on our makeshift picnic blanket, ‘they FOUND us. Gah, Neenee looks annoyed.’ I sighed disgustedly. ‘She’s the sort of girl that probably always does. Oh well. Know your enemy.’ And I turned and waved at the approaching pair. Within seconds, my wish was being granted. Neenee, apparently, has an ardour for talking about herself that even I - a woman who repeatedly writes about her own life on the internet with the expectation that strangers will read it - find extraordinary.

They sat down and, coiling repulsively around Freddie like some pernicious creeper, Neenee squealed in delight at seeing Julianne Moore on the cover of Cora’s copy of Vogue. ‘Oh, I LOVE her, sooo beautiful, really unusual looking. She makes a great model, too, she has such an expressive face. I did some face-modeling a while ago, ‘beauty’ they call it, but I just didn’t find it, you know, um, creative enough? I’m a really creative person and I need to express that so I applied to art college with a specialism in photography. And, you know, I know it’s the right thing for me because that’s how I met my Fweddie.’ She giggled up at him revoltingly, whilst Cora tapped away furiously at her phone and I stared, transfixed, at Freddie’s blank expression.

‘But I don’t miss the modeling’, she went on, inexorable in her self-obsession. ‘It was so wrong for me, you know, and because I wasn’t tall enough for catwalk my agency didn’t give me the attention they should have done. I mean, I think I could have been really successful if I wasn’t so petite. But I’d rather be little, anyway. I think it’s more feminine, you know? And it’s great knowing it’s there, you know, that my face is always going to be looked at in that way? Cause, like, not everyone has the right look, you know?’ There was a blissful pause during which Cora sighed meaningfully and I read the text message she’d sent me during the diatribe. ‘GAHHHH. MISS BATES MEETS DEMON PIXIE. Is that a FAIRY tattooed on her ankle?! Hahahahaha.’

‘You could almost have been a model, Alice’, Neenee piped up again, surprising me in the guilty act of trying to look for the (there it was – alarmingly kitsch) ankle tattoo. ‘You’ve got the height for it, anyway,’ she added, smiling at me with her perfect little teeth, ‘and you know, it’s all about how you present yourself.’ She looked me over critically. ‘OOOOOO, you should let me style you.’ Freddie shifted uncomfortably away her. ‘Neenee,’ he said impatiently, ‘Alice is 25 or something, she doesn’t want to be styled.’ He glanced at me evilly. ‘And I’m pretty sure she only wears her frumpy cow-girl dresses for picnics. Normally she looks quite…’he grinned at me, ‘...groomed.’

I threw a grape at him and laughed. ‘I’ll have you know this is my D.H. Lawrence tea-dress, Freddie.’ He grinned some more and kicked me lazily on the ankle. ‘Call it what you want, Ally, it’ll always be the frumpy cow-girl dress to me.’ I giggled, Cora made a non-verbal sound of disgust and Neenee pouted furiously. ‘I’m sure I saw it in Whistles’, she muttered crossly. ‘Yes, that’s where I got it from’, I said, puzzled. ‘But you said it was…’ Neenee’s voice trailed off uncertainly, but Cora cut in, ‘She meant that she feels like she’s in a D.H. Lawrence novel when she wears it, Neenee. Alice has an infatuation with badly written melodrama.’ Freddie scowled and threw the poor grape at Cora’s face.

Neenee looked from one of us to the other and leaned towards Freddie. ‘Fweddieeee’, she wheedled, ‘Neenee wants an icecweam.’ Cora and I exchanged horrified glances which made her laugh a bit too loud and Neenee stared at her viciously and unfolded her tiny, evil form from the picnic blanket. ‘It’s been nice getting to know you better,’ I murmured up at her lamely, feeling that it had been anything but, but also feeling too English not to say it. ‘Um, Freddie,’ I went on, suicidally polite, ‘there’s a really nice Italian ice cream parlour over that way –‘ I pointed ‘-if you’d rather not have Mr Whippy.’

He had been staring, as far as I could see, at Neenee’s purple-painted toe nails. Either he had a foot fetish, I reasoned, or Neenee’s baby-voice had been pushing it even for him. When I said his name he looked at me with a slightly annoyed expression. ‘Alice, I don’t want an ice cream at all. I don’t like ice cream,’ he remarked in cryptic irritation. Neenee leaned down and stroked his hair possessively, saying, as if he’d been addressing her, ‘I know you don’t, honey bunny, but Neenee does.’ Cora squeezed my hand desperately and I thought Freddie winced. He got up, all the same, said he’d see me later, and walked off in the direction I’d suggested. Neenee simpered an insincere goodbye and trotted off after him, pretending that she couldn’t keep up till he threw her, in her annoying Katy Perry shorts, over his shoulder. She screamed in delight. I choked back vomit. ‘Oh Alice,’ Cora said, pityingly, ‘I’m sorry, but she is FUNNY.’

See, I told you. FUGLY.

And then things got even fuglier. Fugliness has been, it would seem, all around me, much of it frustrating my efforts to blog. Liz, the other assistant at work, was made redundant in the company’s belated response to the credit crunch, leaving me with double the workload and double the attention from Mad Mary. Ahh. My personal hell. Then the nice men next door that Laura and I have been flirting with to get free access to their wireless internet for the last two years moved out, to be replaced by a sweet two-child family that doesn’t have internet at all.

After almost two weeks of peculiar, fraught squabbling over internet packages (Jamie wanted Sky, Laura wanted the cheapest thing available, Freddie wanted Virgin and I just didn’t care at all) Freddie lost his temper and got us Virgin XL without warning anyone. He announced it in a terse email sent round to us all while we were at work. ‘Got us Virgin. TV etc. £12 each monthly. Hope ok. Fred.’ I arrived home at 10.30 that evening after working late and then meeting poor Liz for a drink, to find Freddie sitting in the garden, drinking beer while Laura and Jamie checked Facebook feverishly in the living room, apparently having recovered from their yearnings for other broadband deals.

With no one to talk to, I went out to the garden. ‘Ally’, Freddie said brightly as I hovered in the doorway, ‘how was your day?’ He patted the seat next to him. ‘Fiiiine’, I said, sitting down with him, ‘yours?’ He nodded. ‘Not bad.’ He waved his beer bottle at me. ‘No thanks,’ I told him, before realizing he wanted another. I rolled my eyes and fetched one, feeling dangerously wifey. He put his arm round me as I sat down again. ‘Thanks, gorgeous’, he grinned, evidently feeling provocatively husbandy. I rolled my eyes and slapped him lightly on the leg, and then leaned against him, because he was nice and warm and frankly the weather wasn’t, especially.

He sniffed my hair appreciatively. ‘You smell nice. Good shampoo. Speaking of – you’re running out of that Yin Yang stuff you use on your face. Can you get some more? I quite like it.’ I leaned away and scowled at him. ‘YOU get some more. They’ve got an internet site, just go and order some, it’s not hard.’ His arm tightened around my waist. pulling me back against him and I could feel him laughing. ‘Don’t they have it in shops? Need some to take to Kenya with me.’ ‘Kenya?’ I asked, my voice higher pitched than it ought to have been. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘got some money to make a documentary over there – wildlife and the environment thing. Be out there for three weeks.’ ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘That’s what you do.’ Then, voice tragic, ‘When are you leaving?’ ‘Friday,’ he said, his fingers unexpectedly weaving between mine and squeezing hard. ‘This Friday?’ I asked, too surprised to pretend I didn’t care. ‘The day after tomorrow?’ ‘Yyyeaaahhh, ‘It’s ok, I’m coming back,’ he teased. ‘Would’ve thought you’d be glad to have a break.’ I breathed in deeply and smelled beer on his breath. ‘Well…I’ll miss you’, I admitted, softly. ‘I’ll miss you too,’ he told me, and his hand found its way back to my waist. I sighed and looked down. He pulled me even closer, and put down his beer.

And then, by all the rules of the RomCom, we ought to have kissed. I wanted him to kiss me. I could tell, by the way his fingers were tickling my ribs, that he wanted to kiss me. But what actually happened was that Jamie and Laura shouted that they were going to bed, and too many moments passed, and I remembered that he was my flatmate and he had a girlfriend, albeit a demon pixie one, and this was a bad, bad idea. ‘Freddie’, I said, pulling away, ‘I’m going to bed.’ ‘Yeah’, he said, letting me go, slightly to my disappointment, ‘me too. Um, email me which shops they sell your cream stuff in.’ ‘Mmhmm’, I agreed, trying to remember what we’d been talking about before he’d done the rib-tickling thing, and stumbled off into the house. When I got home the next day there was a note in the bathroom: ‘Ally – left already. Thanks for email. No time for shop, took our moisturizer. See you in three weeks. Fred.’ Unexpectedly, I cried. Fuuuugly.

The Good, the Bad and the Fugly: Part 2, The (Oh So) Good

The Good

After Freddie had hip-squeezed and guilt-tripped me into toast-making, football-watching submission, the rest of the week passed in faintly flirtatious harmony. On Thursday Jamie had friends over for dinner. Freddie sat next to me, his arm possessively on the back of my chair, and drank most of my wine and made unflattering whispered remarks about a male guest who kept trying to flirt with me, reducing me to shocked giggles. Laura took me aside afterwards to tell me she was glad I was making an effort with him, and Jamie thanked me profusely for keeping things so civil while his friends were round. I marveled inwardly at their failure to realize that I’d just succumbed to the worst infatuation of my whole life, and admitted awkwardly that I’d misjudged Freddie ‘a bit’. On Friday night we watched Have I Got News For You while Freddie ironed (topless) and I applied mascara, and both of us said we didn’t really feel like going out but sort of had to. ‘You look fucking hot’, he told me as we left the house for our respective parties, ‘behave yourself and be home by midnight’. I giggled and blushed and told him to shut up.

Cora came over on Saturday morning for brunch, and we were sitting in the garden, discussing the day ahead and concluding that the park was the only thing for it, when Freddie came downstairs. No shirt, horrible pajama bottoms. I gazed, lovingly. ‘Morning, Ally,’ he said, nodding at Cora and stealing a piece of toast from my plate with a provocative grin in my direction. ‘Morning, Freddie,’ I sighed blissfully at him, wriggling happily as he leant over me and used my knife to spread his purloined slice with some of my St. Dalfour marmalade whilst bombarding me with a reassuring blast of something that might not have been Lynx, but was definitely not Tom Ford.

‘How are you today?’ I murmured into his armpit. ‘Yeah,’ he replied, straightening up and munching contentedly, ‘I’m alright, thanks. Can I steal some of your tea?’ I nodded, conscious as I did so that I was leaning pathetically towards him and smiling stupidly while Cora gaped from the other side of the table. ‘What are you DOING?’ she hissed furiously as soon as Freddie had gone into the kitchen for a mug, ‘he’s SOOO BAAAAD’. I shrugged helplessly and smiled some more as he sat down next to me. ‘We’ve got some pain au chocolat as well if you want’, I babbled, made moronic by his proximity, and then, afterthoughtishly, ‘Oh, this is my friend Cora’, as she kicked me under the table.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, still looking at me. ‘Charmed’, said Cora, disgustedly. ‘So,’ he said, after a pause during which he reached over me for the aforementioned pain au chocolat, ‘what are you girls up to today, then?’ He grinned at Cora, who looked affronted and busied herself with a text message. ‘We’re going to sit in the park and have a picnic’, I told him, ‘you should come too if you don’t have plans.’ Cora shot a filthy look at me across the table as Freddie slurped his tea and said, ‘Yeah, alright, I’ll come and join you when Neenee’s up. Whenever that is.’ He glanced restlessly up at his bedroom window and remarked, ‘Bloody hell that girl’s lazy.’

While I suppressed a sudden urge to snatch back my delicious French pastry at this unwelcome reminder that he was not, by any means, my man, and that this was probably not such a misfortune after all, Cora rolled her eyes and darted a venomous look at her new enemy. ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say about your girlfriend,’ she remarked icily. Freddie shrugged. ‘I suppose I won’t say it when she’s my girlfriend, then’, he replied, almost as coldly, the ambiguity of ‘when’ making my heart and eyelashes flutter with hope and hate. Cora glared at him and began gathering up the breakfast things. ‘I’m done, Alice,’ she said briskly, ‘and so are you, by the looks of things. Let’s go, I want to get some sun.’ Freddie looked incredulous. ‘Cora,’ he said, ‘this is a garden. There is sun in it.’ He looked at me sorrowfully. ‘Don’t go yet, Ally, I’ll be bored.’ I looked at him, and looked at Cora and didn’t move. She smiled. ‘Those are lovely pajamas, Freddie’, she began, bitchily. I looked at her again. It was clearly only going to get worse. ‘You’re right, Cora,’ I conceded, ‘I’ll put my shoes on.’

‘What were you DOING?’ I squeaked, out on the pavement, ‘that was so MEAN.’ ‘You were NEVER going to leave,’ she replied vindictively, ‘I had to get you OUT of there. He’s APPALLING and you were PATHETIC. He’s viler than ALEX. He’s my WORST.’ I shrugged miserably. ‘It’s my fault you think that, I shouldn’t have been so horrible about him,’ I said weakly. ‘Yes you SHOULD,’ she cackled. ‘Until he drowned your brain in his disgusting tsunami of testosterone your descriptions did him perfect justice. Let’s just hope he and poor old Whorebitch don’t find us in the park. God.’ I had to agree with that, at least, but as I trailed wistfully after her to Wholefoods I found myself dwelling on the word ‘when’ and the memory of Freddie’s knee pressing against mine under the garden table. Either I was being ruthlessly used for beverages and baked goods, I thought, or Neenee was going to have to find some other man’s room to be lazy in.

The Good, the Bad and the Fugly: Part 1, The Bad

The Bad

As you may recall, my evening of woe with Wanker Banker Alex was followed by a tense week with Freddie. We were both in the house far more than is usual for either of us; in my case because of the exhausting, uglifying dregs of my swine flu, in his because…oh, God only knows why Freddie does anything. God only knows what he does at all, frankly. Anyway, when we weren’t having another awkward conversation about the weather or Gordon Brown or something equally depressing and English, or avoiding such interactions by taking refuge in our respective bedrooms (actually that may only have been me), we were irritating one another.

‘Those pajamas are disgusting’, I remarked one evening, without the slightest context, and to Freddie’s obvious surprise. ‘Not as disgusting as your toothbrush’, he muttered back, no doubt itching to get the poor thing and bin it again. ‘Well, but I don’t walk to the corner shop with my toothbrush, do I?’ I replied patronisingly. ‘And I don’t put my pajamas in my mouth’, he retorted, making me want to slap him. ‘Your hair is blocking up the plug-hole in the shower,’ he informed me confrontationally on Tuesday morning, standing in front of me at 6.45 wearing only a towel, with his arms aggressively folded. ‘Mmhmm, ok, I’ll unblock it,’ I told him, thin-lipped with irritation. ‘But while we’re on the subject of bathroom etiquette, perhaps you could ask your girlfriend to stop stealing my Yin Yang moisturizer.’ Freddie looked sheepish. ‘That might have been me’, he said apologetically.

Minor quibbles erupted into a near row on Wednesday. I wanted to watch a documentary on the BBC about Milton. He wanted to watch Manchester United v. Barcelona. The football had already been on for some time when I came downstairs for my literary fix. ‘I hope you know that’s going off at 9’, I said lightly, hoping that he was only watching casually. ‘I hope you know it’s not,’ he replied, grimly, refusing to look round. ‘Mm, no, it is, Freddie, because I’ve been planning to watch this show for ages’. (On the other sofa I saw Jamie stiffen with the fear of confrontation). ‘Bad luck,’ Freddie said, and turned up the volume. Annoyed, I turned off the television and stood in front of it. He stared at me. ‘What the fuck, Alice? Turn it back on.’ (Voice definitely raised.) A stand-off ensued. He glared at me uncompromisingly; I stood shuffling my feet and feeling that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. ‘Alice,’ he said again, ‘turn the TV on.’ ‘No’, I muttered, sullenly, ‘not unless I can watch my Milton thing’.

He stood to approach me (and the hotly contested household appliance) and his hands gripped my hips to move me out of the way. I refused to be moved. He looked down at me angrily for a long, hip-tingling pause. Then his left hand detached itself from my right hip and he leaned against me and around me to turn the TV back on, while my heart thudded angrily and I considered kicking his shin. (I didn’t, because I am a coward.) He looked momentarily past me to check the score, and then stared down at me. ‘Alice. Please let me watch the football. Your Milton thing is on the BBC, I looked. You can iPlayer it. I know you don’t like me very much, but I think we should try to get on.’ I felt a sudden rush of guilt and murmured something about not disliking him, which he swept aside with ‘It doesn’t really matter. Can I just watch the football.’ I nodded, speechless. ‘Good’, he said gently and gave the hip he was still holding a manipulative little squeeze.

Ten minutes later I had made him a cup of tea and some toast and was curled up next to him on the sofa, his arm resting behind me as he explained why Alex Ferguson was a fool for not having Paul Scholes on the pitch. Argument over. Freddie and Barcelona 2 – Alice and Manchester United 0. I think Manchester United minded more than me.

Swine Fever Fall Out: Part 2, Alex

You last saw me trembling and miserable in my bedroom, confessing to a sickening attraction to Frightful Freddie to a suitably sickened Cora. Well, things quickly got worse. The following evening, as I endured my purgatorially long bus journey home, my phone rang. I was listening to the radio on my hands free kit, so I answered without knowing who was calling, assuming, based on past experience, that it would be my mother. ‘Hello’, I said, peering depressively out at the hateful, hateful London traffic. ‘Hi Alice’, said the caller, (male voice, slight estuary accent) ‘I wasn’t sure you’d pick up.’ He sounded drunk and not very happy, and for several seconds I couldn’t breathe.

‘Hi Alex’, I eventually murmured back, and then, automatically, ‘how are you?’ There was another longish pause before he answered, sounding even drunker, ‘Well, I got fired. Which is fucking annoying.’ I was still struggling with the fact that I was talking to Alex – or Wanker Banker to you (see first entry) – so I only managed to say ‘Oh. I’m sorry, Alex’. I really was, too. For all his wankerishness, and the never seeing him, and his drunken implication that I was lucky to be going out with him, I’d quite adored him and I’d liked to think that his life would tick along vilely but happily without me. Anyway, the idea of Alex, of all people, being fired was unspeakable. This was really bringing the formidable evil of the credit crunch home to me.

‘So look, let’s do something, I’m sick of not seeing you’ he barked in his usual, consummately self-involved way, and my heart fluttered pathetically and unexpectedly. ‘I don’t know’, I sighed, ‘I’m quite busy’. He snorted. ‘Are you seeing someone?’ A pause. ‘…Kind of’. (A lie, obviously). ‘Kind of? What’s this guy’s name?’ Now, obviously he was being a prick, and the only appropriate answer was ‘None of your business, now I’ve got to go. I’m sorry you got fired’, but somehow what I actually said was, ‘He’s called Freddie’. Even as I said it I realised that Freddie didn’t matter at all, and I wanted more than anything to go and see Alex, which ought to have been a relief but wasn’t.

‘Freddie? Shit name. Fucking awful, actually. I’ve got to go, call me later if you want to go for a drink.’ He hung up. Ahh, Alex. How I’d missed his rudeness and abrupt adieus. Naturally I spent the rest of the bus journey in a state of wretched inner turmoil, trying and failing to re-interest myself in Freddie, and leaving panicky voicemails on a range of female friend answer machines. By the time I walked into my house, I was an image of overwrought femininity, wide-eyed with distress and only avoiding tearfulness by virtue of my stiff upper lip upbringing. I burst through the door, desperately hoping to find Laura and Jamie, staunch allies in my time of Vile Alex need, but instead getting – you guessed it – Freddie. He was standing, topless and barefoot, in the middle of the living room, apparently trying to unravel his iPod earphones.

He looked up and looked worried. ‘You alright, Ally?’ I gulped and shifted from one foot to another. ‘My ex called me’, I replied miserably. ‘He’s been fired. He wants to see me and I don’t think it’s a great idea.’ I looked up at Freddie despairingly and vaguely hoped that he would say something useful. He put his earphones down on the sofa and stood with his hands on his hips. ‘Fuck him.’ He said decisively. ‘He’s feeling a bit down because he got fired and he wants to shag you to make himself and his ego feel better. Don’t go there, Ally, you’ll only get hurt.’ I stared at him tragically and protested weakly, ‘I don’t think it’s like that’. He shrugged ‘As a bloke, I’m telling you, it is.’ There was a pregnant pause as I looked at the floor unhappily and Freddie looked at me uncertainly, before he murmured ‘Oh Ally, I’m sorry, the guy just sounds like a real prick’, and pulled me into a naked-chested embrace. ‘I know’, I muttered into his surprisingly nice-smelling shoulder, ‘he really is.’ Then he let me go a bit and looked at me for a while, and I thought he might kiss me, which was interesting because I had no idea what I’d do if he did, but actually just said, ‘Right, I have to change. Neenee’s coming over in an hour’.

‘Oh,’ I gasped, stepping back and trying not to think about his nice-smelling shoulder any more than I absolutely had to. ‘Right. I’ll go out then, I don’t want to be in your way. You know what, anyway, I think you’re wrong about Alex, I think I’m going to go and see him’. And as I said it I realised that Alex didn’t matter at all, and I wanted more than anything to stay at home with Freddie, which was ridiculous and confusing. Freddie looked irritated and shrugged.

Thus, half an hour later, ridiculous and confused, I plunged back into the London evening to meet Alex. Freddie looked me up and down as I left the house in my 2nd date outfit, but didn’t pass comment. Alex, when we met, was tipsy but surprisingly human. This meant that I also got tipsy, and found myself kissing him outside his house. He also smelled nice. Freddie-ishly nice. ‘Alex’, I blurted out, ‘do you wear Lynx?’ He pushed me away in apparent disgust. ‘No, I don’t wear fucking Lynx, what do you think I am? Fourteen? This is Tom Ford.’

This was typical Alex behaviour; vain and irritating. God, he might as well have been wearing an apricot coloured scarf. ‘Well, I’m SORRY’, I snapped back, recognizing my error in coming at all, ‘but you smell like Freddie.’ (Forgetting, obviously, that I’d pretended that I was going out with Freddie.) ‘Your new boyfriend wears LYNX?’ Alex howled, either angry or amused, I wasn’t sure which. ‘No, apparently he wears Tom Ford’, I replied, exasperated, ‘and anyway, it’s none of your business and this was a mistake and I’m going home.’ This bus journey was equally hideous, though shorter, and ended with a dark and empty living room, and a bathroom in which I found my pot of Yin Yang moisturizer with the top off. Shoreditch Whorebitch.

I woke up to a hangover, the beginnings of Freddie’s swine flu, an antagonistic text message from Alex, and the miserable realization that I’d had a dream about kissing either Freddie or Alex – I wasn’t sure which. That evening, I caught the train home to Suffolk, and embraced sickness and parental care. And the whole of this week has been spent either avoiding Freddie or having to engage in painful conversations with him that clearly neither of us enjoy.

Gah. Lowest ebb.

Swine Fever Fall Out: Part 1, Shoreditch Whorebitch

‘Oh my GOD, Alice,’ Cora snapped at me, putting down her cake fork in irritation, ‘can’t you just SHUT UP about fucking FREDDIE for ONE MINUTE while I eat my éclair? You haven’t talked about anything else for the last hour, you’re OBSESSED.’ I opened my mouth to protest, but she waggled a stern finger at me. ‘I think Becky and those people that read your blog are right. You have a crush on him - as wrong as that may be - and until you admit it I don’t want to hear any more about him.’ She raised her fork again and shoveled in her mouthful of fresh cream and choux pastry with a vehemence I found almost frightening.

I stared at her, stunned and horrified by the et tu Brute-ness of it all. It was Wednesday afternoon last week, and we were in Maison Bertaux in Soho, having both escaped from work early to eat our favourite chocolate éclairs. This was supposed to be a safe place, full of understanding and free of criticism. Still, thinking about it, I realised that I really had talked about nothing else. I hadn’t told her about Becky’s new ‘boyfriend’, Paul, or mentioned my new Mango dress, or gossiped about Jamie’s dinner with his ex-girlfriend. I hadn’t even said that I’d got asked out on a date by a reasonably promising man in Whole Foods on Sunday afternoon, even though that was a genuinely funny story, unlike the one I was now telling about Freddie and his probably unintentional failure to thank me for hanging up his washing on Sunday.

And, let’s face it, this wasn’t the first complaint I’d had. Liz, at work, had rolled her eyes at me during our Monday morning coffee break, remarking with a sigh, as I began the story of Saturday evening, ‘Oh dear. Freddie again.’ Even Mad Mary seemed to have gathered that I was in some way connected with a man whose name began with an F, a sure sign that he’s been mentioned much too often in the workplace.

‘You’re right,’ I conceded, poking at the chocolate topping. ‘I’m sorry, let’s talk about something else.’ We did, and it was a very nice afternoon tea, but I went home feeling uneasy and irritable, the more so as I realised shortly before we finished our third pot of tea that I had a spot brewing on my left cheek. Finding the house empty, I decided to combat this new threat with an early night, so I showered and Yin Yanged as soon as I’d eaten dinner. Getting out of the shower, it occurred to me that I ought to drink some of Dr Stuart’s Skin Purify tea, too; a theory confirmed by a glimpse of the growing blemish in the steamy mirror.

With this in mind, I wrapped myself hastily in my (slightly too small) towel, and ran down the stairs, hair dripping in wet coils over my face, eyes piggy with shower-water and surrounded by smudgy mascara, skin cleansed and shiny, spot a-glow and – ‘Hello, Alice! This is Neenee.’ There, in the living room, looking at me with loathsome amusement on their faces, were Freddie and an immaculately made-up female with great shoes and, it would seem, an unbelievably awful name, whom I could only imagine was ‘some girl from Shoreditch’.

‘Hi Alice’, said ‘Neenee’ holding out a hand on which each fingernail had a different, arty, polish-pattern. ‘Oh – gosh – um – towel –‘ I stuttered pathetically, wanting desperately to die. ‘I just came down for some tea, I’ll get out of your way.’ ‘Neenee’ smiled coldly, Freddie grinned happily. I hurried off into the kitchen, leaving them to snuggle up hatefully on the sofa, and tremblingly boiled the kettle whilst also trying to arrange my hair to cover the spot.

Then, taking a deep breath, I went back through the living room, hoping to get away with muttering good night and dashing back up the stairs. Nope. ‘How was your day, Alice?’ Freddie asked, arm around Neenee’s shoulders. ‘Fine’, I said, wishing he wouldn’t look at me, ‘yours?’ ‘Yeah’, he began, but was immediately interrupted. ‘Sorry, darling,’ ‘Neenee’ said, suddenly, touching his face in a manner that made me want to retch, ‘Alice, your leg’s bleeding’. I looked down. Oh yes. So it was. Just below the knee. ‘Must’ve cut it shaving. ‘ I shrugged, miserably, ‘oh dear’. She looked at me pityingly. ‘Shaving? You should really wax, so much better.’

I nodded and smiled and, feeling sick with embarrassment, walked bloodily upstairs. Immediately I called Cora and whispered the awful news to her. ‘Oh my GOD,’ she squealed back, ‘that sounds DIRE. What a Shoreditch Whorebitch! And who the fuck’s called NEENEE?’ Gales of laughter. ‘Well, Alice, thank God you DON’T fancy him, anyway.’ A long, long pause.

‘Thing is, Cora, I think I do.’

Swine Flu Freddie and Ally Cat

Look on my Saturday evening, ye readers, and despair for me...:

I arrive home with Becky, who is supposed to be eating dinner with me after an afternoon in the park, to find Freddie lying on the sofa, surrounded by piles of damp-looking man-size Kleenex and empty mugs, with the remote control dangling limply from his left hand and a self-pitying expression on his slightly gray face. ‘Hello, Freddie’, I say coolly, hoping to beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen, ‘this is Becky. Becky, this is Freddie’. ‘Hi Alice’, he groans at me, annoyingly, as he struggles into a sitting position and rudely ignores Becky. ‘How are you? Good day?’ I pause in the middle of the living room, faintly exasperated by his desire for a conversation. (I have Mad Mary to blow coffee-breath and sickness into my face all week, I certainly don’t need Freddie doing it all weekend.) ‘Fine, fine’, I say, and then, with an apologetic glance at Becky, and because I really see no way of avoiding it, ‘are you alright?’

He nods, pathetically. I sigh. ‘You don’t really look it, Freddie.’ He sighs too. ‘I don’t feel very well’. He does look wretched and my maternal instincts begin to misbehave within me. ‘Do you think you’ve got a temperature?’ I ask, sinking into an uncomfortable half-sitting position on the other sofa. He shakes his head and mutters something about being fine. ‘Freddie, you’re not fine,’ I say, because it’s manifestly true. He blows his nose loudly. ‘Do you want me to get you some more tea?’ I ask. He gazes at me gratefully. ‘I’d love that, Alice. That would be very sweet.’ I reach over to pick up his flotilla of used coffee cups and head for the kitchen, with Becky twitching slightly in my wake, obviously desperate to say something.

As soon as we’re out of sight, she explodes into stage whispers. ‘THAT is FREDDIE?’ she chokes, unable to contain herself. ‘Yes’, I reply. ‘THAT is Freddie. He’s sick. I’m going to make him tea.’ I put the kettle on. ‘He’s FIT’, she gasps, gripping my arm. ‘Mm, not right now. Right now he is unfit,’ I say absentmindedly. (Becky thinks a startling range of men fall into this category). ‘ALICE’, she squeaks, beside herself, ‘he’s GORGEOUS. You should definitely have sex with him.’ ‘BECKY!’ I explode, appalled, ‘He’s HATEFUL. He threw away my toothbrush and groped me in the middle of the night after using his awful friend to flush me out of my room. He is a BAD man and I am not having sex with him.’

She stands grinning at me. ‘You fancy him,’ she says provocatively. I roll my eyes. ‘No, Becky. At best, I tolerate him. At worst, I actively dislike him. I definitely do not fancy him. This is not a Rom-Com. In real life, Becky, when people don’t like each other it’s because they don’t like each other, not because they secretly want to have sex with each other.’ ‘Yes you do,’ she interrupts, with unreasonable disregard for my entire argument, ‘you’re making TEA for him AND –‘ (as I begin loading the dirty cups into the dishwasher), ‘you’re cleaning up after him’. I straighten up and look at her to see if she’s serious. She is. Ugh. ‘He’s SICK and I’m being NICE. That’s all that’s happening here.’ ‘You like him’, she insists, unperturbed. ‘No. I DISlike him,’ I tell her, grimly, ‘I am currently thinking that swine flu would be an appropriate karmic punishment for his revolting ways, though despite the fuss he’s making, man-flu is more probable.’

‘You fancy him,’ she says again, grinning some more. ‘And I’m going home now. You should spend time alone together, and anyway, I really don’t want to get sick. I have a date with Paul on Tuesday’. I gape at her, appalled. ‘Which one’s Paul? Wait, you’re LEAVING? I bought things for dinner. DON’T be stupid. Look, I’m sorry he’s here, I thought everyone was out tonight.’ She shrugs. ‘Seriously, he looks really ill, though also hot. He probably HAS got swine flu. Give him the dinner.’ The kettle boils and as I make Freddie his tea, Becky makes her escape. ‘Bye, Freddie’, I hear her warble as she goes, ‘have a nice night with Alice. She’s making you dinner.’

Teeth clenched, I go back into the living room carrying Freddie’s tea. ‘Ally’, he sighs at me, blissfully, ‘thank you so much for making me dinner. I’m really hungry. You’re so lovely.’ ‘No, I’m not -’ I begin, before crumbling into a begrudging ending of, ‘that’s alright, I’m cooking anyway.’ Half an hour later, Freddie is eating my salmon fishcakes and vegetables and mumbling compliments. An hour later we’re watching The Bourne Ultimatum in companionable silence. Two hours later, he’s asleep and I wash up and then go upstairs to find a blanket for him. Two hours and fifteen minutes later, having covered him with the blanket and found myself thinking that he’s really quite nice when he’s sick, I realize that Becky’s right. He’s not bad looking…

---

And then, of course, I remembered that good looking or otherwise, he is also Freddie, and frightful and overbearing and rude and probably sexist. And just to prove the point, as I bent down to pick up his dirty tissues he lurched into consciousness for long enough to pat my hip and mumble into the cushion he’s probably been drooling on, ‘You’re a great little nurse, my little Ally Cat.’ HIS LITTLE ALLY CAT? Oh god. And I made that man dinner. I swatted his horrid wandering hand off and ran upstairs to shower and exfoliate and Yin Yang myself into something approaching cleanliness. I’m going to sleep now. Angrily.

The Breakfast Clubbing

Well, dinner didn’t happen, mostly because Freddie did another of his disappearing acts, resulting in neither sight nor sound of him until the very early hours of Wednesday morning.

I was woken by the sound of my bedroom door opening, and a male voice shouting something about it being the wrong room to some other unknown called Tommy. I sat up in bed, too confused to be frightened, and plaintively told the intruder to go away. At the sound of my voice, though, Loud Mouth took another (drunkenly unsteady) step towards my bed and bawled gleefully to ‘Tommy’ that ‘Ay ay, there’s a GIRL in here!’ Mortified, and newly scared, I made a squeaking noise and pulled the duvet over my head – a poor evasive action, in hindsight, but clearly all I was capable of at the time – and hoped Jamie would wake up and save me.

Thankfully, the period of heart-thumping suspense that followed was short-lived, because Freddie’s voice began shouting, too, from downstairs. ‘For fuck’s sake Jonny, just get out of her room. The bathroom’s next door, you cock. Get the fuck out of her room.’ Loud Mouth Jonny retreated and I bounced out of bed to slam the door behind him, to hear him remark (as he stumbled off to urinate on my toilet seat) ‘I’m leaving, but I bet she’d’ve liked me to stay’, and snigger revoltingly. I hesitated momentarily, staring at the back of the door, before adrenaline and anger got the better of me and I threw it open again and marched downstairs, wearing only knickers, a tank top and an aura of righteous outrage.

‘Hi Ally’, Freddie said uncertainly, scrambling up from the sofa. His eyes had the unnatural brightness of the drunkard, and he was staring at my knickers. (Maybe Becky had a point last week).‘Don’t you ‘hi Ally’ me,’ I retorted, intending to sound dignified in justifiable offence, but only managing a mixture of querulous and petulant. (No matter – right was on my side). ‘Firstly, my name is Alice, I hate being called Ally, and secondly, why did a strange man just walk into my bedroom?’ I paused, momentarily distracted by my own peevishness and by a glimpse of my underdressed self in the wall mirror. Then, since there was no one else in the room, ‘And why was he calling you Tommy?’

Freddie blinked at me and made an obvious effort to look at my face instead of my underwear. I thought smugly that it was a good thing that my skin has been behaving of late, and that the Yin Yang regime has left it with a healthier than usual glow. (Confrontation is easier when pretty.) ‘Sorry, Alice.’ He rubbed his face tiredly, which was, irritatingly, quite mollifying. ‘That’s my mate, Jonny, from university. He’s a bit drunk, I’m really sorry. Must’ve thought your room was the bathroom, s’my fault.’ He looked at me helplessly. ‘Well, then, I’ll just give thanks he didn’t unzip and wee all over me’, I replied grumpily, ‘but it was scary, especially because of the Tommy thing. I thought there were two strange men in my house.’

‘Oh God, Alice, I’m so sorry,’ he said, running his hand through his hair, ‘everyone at uni called me Tommy. I’ll make it up to you.’ He peered at me some more. ‘You look all cold and scared, you poor thing.’ ‘Well,’ I said in an annoyingly high-pitched voice, because it was the middle of the night and it WAS scary and I had expected Freddie belligerence, not an apology, ‘I was scared, it was horrid’. The results of this were also surprising. Freddie took a step forward and enveloped me in a Lynxy embrace, trapping my folded arms against his chest and filling my nose with deodorant and some form of alcohol. ‘Poor Ally’, he mumbled, causing my eyes to roll.

The strangeness of the moment, which was considerable, was broken when Loud Mouth Jonny descended the stairs and guffawed. ‘Bloody hell, Tom, I didn’t know you had a thing going on with one of your housemates. Thought you were seeing that girl from Shoreditch,’ he huffed out, between heavy, beery breaths. Mortified, both by this odious assumption and by my undressed state, I struggled free of Freddie and hurried back upstairs, mumbling goodnight to him and unable even to speak to the loathsome Jonny. ‘You tosser,’ I heard Freddie say as I shut my bedroom door.

If I’d expected his contrition to manifest itself in sober, daytime life, I was wrong. As usual, we saw little of each other beyond momentary crossings of our bathroom-bound paths in the morning (during one of which he angered me by raising his eyebrows at the state of my new toothbrush) but we were all at home yesterday. We were all at home, and so we all had brunch together. Freddie, annoyingly, behaved as though he was holding court, leaning back in his chair and talking endlessly, with Laura and Jamie hanging on his every word, Laura giggling wildly at his every (weak) joke, and occasionally hopping up and fussing around him with tea pots and toast racks and MY organic Grove Fresh orange juice.

‘Did you know, Jamie’, I remarked, eventually, unable to bear Freddie’s self-satisfaction any longer, ‘that Freddie brought a friend home on Tuesday night, and that he walked into my bedroom? It was horrible.’ The other two looked momentarily appalled, and then Freddie started laughing, which of course meant that his thralls had to as well. ‘Oh yeah, that was bloody funny, Ally, you have to admit. You were so frightened,’ he went on mockingly, grinning at the other two. ‘She came running downstairs in her night clothes looking like she was going to cry. I had to give her a cuddle to calm her down.’ Laura sighed disgustingly, Jamie smirked admiringly, Freddie laughed uproariously, and I just gaped disbelievingly. He has no shame.

Truce?

Freddie’s date on Thursday evidently went well, as he didn’t come home again until very early on Sunday morning, when I was woken by the sound of the door slamming behind him, and then drifted off again to the dulcet tones of his probably inebriated whistling in the bathroom. Ahh, Freddie. So good to have you home. Strangely, it was. Having spent all of that Thursday night and much of Friday morning concocting clever ways to tell him exactly what I thought of his patronising tone and gropey hands, I had found myself perversely unable to enjoy the weekend without him. Throughout Friday evening I could feel the scathing remarks slipping away into irrelevance and by Saturday afternoon his unexpected absence had left me deflated and grumpy.

Jamie and Laura had proved depressingly unsympathetic, both to my ire and to my frustrated need to express it. Jamie had come home halfway through my washing-up trial and remarked that it was nice of me to do it since most of it wasn’t mine. ‘It’s nothing to do with nice’, I’d told him, crossly,’ Freddie MADE me do it.’ Jamie raised his eyebrows and laughed. ‘What a legend!’ he exclaimed happily, and wandered off upstairs. Laura had only looked away uncomfortably when I raised the issue of the lecture with her and made infuriatingly diplomatic noises about all the housework he’d done. Worse still were their infatuated references to things he’d said and done over Easter, while I’d been at home. ‘Alice, Alice,’ they’d giggle, their Freddie-crushes nauseatingly apparent, ‘listen to this, it’s really funny, Freddie said…’ (Insert puerile Freddie anecdote). Ugh. Support, clearly, was going to be hard to come by.

I took solace in phoning friends to ask for advice. ‘Wait for the right moment’, Nick told me. ‘You need to think like a man – if you’re going to take him down, do it when you have a solid rational reason for it. If you go in there and shout about something girly he’ll just think you’re an idiot. You’ve gotta do it, though, he sounds like a dick.’ Becky’s suggestions were equally strategic, though different in tone. ‘Listen, honey, you need to bare some flesh,’ she insisted, in spite of my complaints that it was tacky. ‘He’s intimidating you with his pecs all the time, so you need to get some leg out and show off a little ass and before you know it he’ll be wrapped round your little finger. You’ve got a very hot body, Miss Keates, make use of it.’

With this in mind, I dressed in something appropriately leggy on Sunday morning, applied mascara and Yinners moisturiser for extra glow, and sat on the sofa to await his emergence. He finally padded downstairs at midday, looking tired and happy with touselled hair, but fully dressed and carrying a bag. ‘Morning, Alice’ he said, smiling, ‘you look very lovely today.’ ‘Morning, Freddie’, I replied, irritated to have been denied even the opportunity to tell him that I hated being called Ally, ‘where are you off to?’ ‘Work’, he said cheerfully, and patted me absentmindedly on the head. ‘See you soon.’ And off he went, leaving me feeling silly, underdressed, and embarrassed that I had no idea what job he does, on the sofa. I’ve only seen him once since, and that was on Tuesday morning when I had to knock on the bathroom door to beg for my toothbrush so I wasn’t late for work. Rumour has it that he will be home tonight, and I have decided to make dinner and bury the hatchet.

After all, if you can’t beat ‘em…

Freddie 1 - 0 Alice

Five blissful Freddie-free days came to a soggy, depressing end when I arrived home in London from an extended Easter weekend yesterday afternoon. The rot set in when I was still several yards from my front door. Standing outside was an ominous stack of black bin bags, and I remembered with dread Freddie’s parting remark on Good Friday that he ‘might have a bit of a clean up’.

I unlocked the door awash with anticipatory anger, head filled with images of him sweeping credit card statements and old copies of all my favourite books into trashy ignominy with his horrible used tea bags and copies of London Lite. ‘Watch out, Ally’, he bawled, as I stepped into the porch, ‘the floor’s still very wet’. My teeth on edge (good God, couldn’t he at least have been at work?), I pressed on into the living room. He was scrubbing the coffee table, using something that looked suspiciously like my Cath Kidston flannel (what next - polishing it with my Yin Yang moisturizer?) and wearing nothing except pyjama bottoms.

‘Hello Alice!’ he grinned at me, squeezing grayish water out of poor Cath. ‘Hi Freddie.’ I replied, grumpily. ‘This must be that clean up you mentioned.’ He nodded, obviously pleased with himself. ‘Day off. Bloody hell it was dirty in here.’ If he expected me to be grateful instead of insulted, he had misjudged the situation badly. ‘Right.’ I began, conscious of pouting, ‘Well, couldn’t you have used some kitchen towels?’ He walked slowly round the table towards me. ‘Used them all on the bathroom. And this was just lying around, so…’

I backed away, sensing that a molestation of my hips was brewing. ‘Well, it wasn’t lying around’, I snapped, ‘it was just in the bathroom, which is where flannels live.’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry. Looks much nicer up there now, though. Go and have a look.’ I obeyed, speechless, and found it glittering and empty. Most of my things were easily discovered either in the cabinet or turfed onto my bed (thanks, Freddie) but my toothbrush was missing. Suspicion bloomed.

‘Quick question for you, Freddie,’ I began, coming slowly back down the stairs, ‘do you know anything about the whereabouts of my toothbrush?’ He looked blank for a moment and then started to laugh. ‘Bloody hell, was that yours?’ he asked, smirking and showing off his weird double dimples. ‘I’m sorry, it looked fucked so I binned it.’ I gaped at him. ‘Could you not just have got rid of the HEAD? It was detachable. And it wasn’t - fucked. You can’t just throw things away because you don’t like the look of them!’ (squeaking). He laughed harder. ‘Well, maybe YOU should’ve thrown it away. It was disgusting.’ I could feel myself blushing, which happens rarely, and on this occasion made me hate my face quite passionately. ‘It was a WEEK OLD,’ I gasped, humiliated. ‘I CHEW them, ok? It’s just one of those habits. I CHEW them. God.’ He patted me on the arm. ‘Ahhh, well, you want to grow out of that, Ally’.

‘Look’, he went on, tone changing, ‘while you’re here. Can I have a word about housekeeping?’ Still blushing I nodded, automatically. He leaned against the sofa, arms folded across his still uncovered chest. ‘Now look, I’ve already spoken to Jamie and Laura about this, so don’t take it personally, but this place has been a bit messy. We’re paying a lot of money for it, so let’s not live like students, eh? I came down on Saturday morning and the living room smelled and there were dishes sitting on top of the dishwasher instead of in it. All you need to do is give the surfaces a little wipe and…’ The lecture continued for some time while I tried to muster words of protest, but only managed to blink at him and look anxious ‘Now, there’s some washing up in the kitchen that needs to be done, and I’m pretty sure some of it’s yours,’ he finished, ‘so if you wouldn’t mind doing that once I’ve hopped out of the shower, that’d be great’.

I phoned Cora as soon as I could hear the water running. ‘Err, well, IS the washing up yours?’ she asked, when I’d told her the story. ‘Because, when I lived with you, you did sometimes forget to do your washing up, so…’ ‘CORA!’ I wailed, hurt, ‘that is not fair, and nor is it the POINT. And NO, it’s NOT mine. Well…maybe one plate is or something, but –‘ ‘Then don’t do it.’ ‘I’m not GOING to, I only sort of said yes because I was still so embarrassed about the toothbrush,’ I hissed as I heard the water stop.

I hung up, because I could hear the sound of an aerosol being deployed and, sure enough, Freddie’s Lynxy odour wafted evilly down the stairs, followed by Freddie himself, miraculously dressed. ‘Freddie –‘ I started, intercepting him at the bottom of the steps, but he grabbed me with more than usual force by the hips and walked me several steps backward before moving me aside. ‘Sorry Ally, I’m off out. Date. Let’s chat later, ok? Thanks for taking care of those dishes, you’re sweet.’

Twenty minutes later, I called Cora back. ‘Alice, what’s that splashing sound?’ she asked, suspiciously. I sighed. ‘I’m washing the dishes’.

My hips don't lie...

Pity me, for there are many evils in my life and the greatest amongst them is a man called Freddie, and he lives in my house. He moved in on Sunday, having met Laura and Jamie on Tuesday, and somehow got rave reviews from both of them. So I arrived back from the gym on Sunday afternoon to find both of them out, and the living room hip-deep with Freddie’s boxes. Freddie himself (5’11ish, muddy-blond hair, creased face, shirt tucked in to jeans) was standing in the middle of it all, hands on hips, surveying the chaos he’d created and listening to music that I hated instantly.

‘Hi!’ I began, brightly, shouting to be heard over the ‘electro’ (or whatever), ‘I’m Alice!’ He looked round and shook my hand unnecessarily hard ‘Hi; Freddie. Uh, you have something in your teeth’. I recoiled, affronted. ‘Oh God, really?’ ‘Yup’, he replied, turning away to fiddle with his enormous surf-board bag. I ran upstairs to look at my teeth in the bathroom mirror, only to find there was nothing in them at all, but I re-brushed vigorously all the same, wondering if it was appropriate to resent him for pointing out the phantom tooth-menace so bluntly – and so early.

I was inspecting myself in the mirror ahead of further interaction, when he loomed aggressively in the doorway. Without a word, he pushed past me and dumped a ridiculously big box, apparently full of Lynx, onto my sink, knocking over my electric toothbrush and Yin Yang cleanser.

‘Um, Freddie, there are already two of us using this bathroom, so maybe you’d find it easier to share Laura’s on the second floor’, I suggested politely. He leaned against the sink and ran his hand through his blandish blondish hair impatiently. ‘No, ‘I’ll use this one. Nearer my room.’ Speechless at his failure to take my gentle hint, I leant over to pick my Braun and my Yinners out of the sink. He, irritatingly, did exactly the same, resulting in a collision of our hands over the cleanser, causing me to step back too quickly and bump into the door-frame.

‘Alright, careful’ he remarked, apparently amused, putting my things into a bathroom cabinet. ‘They don’t GO in there’ I whined, annoying even myself, and prompting a disgustingly patronizing smile from him. ‘Well…now that there’s three of us using this bathroom, we’d better be tidier’, he explained, smugly. And then he stepped into the doorway too, putting his hands on my hips to move me out of the way, and bounded off down the stairs, leaving me gaping and flushed on the landing.

An hour later, battered by more of Freddie’s tearing around the house like a Lynxy whirlwind, rearranging cupboards and hoisting his hateful boxes with obvious malice, with me fluttering ineffectually in his wake, twittering pathetically and being routinely ignored and repeatedly handled, I had fled. I was sitting in Planet Organic opposite a hastily summoned Jamie, drinking peppermint tea and nibbling distractedly on Montezuma’s Creamy White Chocolate, an excellent alternative in times of emotional need to Green and Black’s Creamy Milk.

‘Look, Alice,’ he was saying, ‘I think you’re overreacting. He seemed like a really great guy - we thought you’d get on well with him. Wait till you get to know him.’ I stared at him. ‘JAMIE!’ (through a mouthful of vanilla goodness) ‘He’s a nightmare. He HIP-SWIVELLED me. FOUR TIMES! He has overtaken our BATHROOM.’ Jamie shrugged. ‘So use the other one and tell him the touching thing isn’t cool. Either way, he lives with us so you’d better make friends with him.’ I went home in high dudgeon, steeling myself for a prolonged turf war and slightly relishing the idea, but Frightful Freddie and his horrible boxes had vanished for the night. Thus far, our meetings have since been limited to awkward encounters in and around MY bathroom. He grins, shirtless. I roll my eyes, unimpressed. Oh yes. It’s war alright. Watch this space.

Breakfast Date

Yes, I know what you're thinking. 'Breakfast date? BREAKFAST date? Surely not...' Because, really, never have two words been so ill-suited for such close snuggling. And yet, at 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, a time useless for anything other than sleeping, in my opinion, I was sitting outside a cafe in Belgravia waiting for my blind date, Mystery Barrister, to arrive. I was miraculously on time, the novelty of rising so early on a Sunday having driven me into a neurotic 7 am alarm setting followed by an equally neurotic over-application of yummy Yin Yang moisturiser to my under-eye area in a probably futile bid to prevent my bags from developing into industrial sacks.

Mystery Barrister, by contrast, was 25 minutes late, which was annoying, and he appeared to be valiantly resisting the modern trend of the metrosexual, his chapped cheeks suggesting that he has never used a moisturiser in his life, let alone a nice-smelling one. He was also 5’7 (an inch shorter than me), bald, yellow of tooth and oddly clad. How my heart sank as he approached my table, wearing tweed and a nervous grin. How it plunged when he pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose vigorously upon it (because, ewww). And how it very nearly died within me when he mentioned that he’d been on a lot of blind dates recently through Match.com. I seethed inwardly and resolved to inflict a hideous revenge upon Becky, who had masterminded this vile mis-match.

Things were not set to improve quickly, either, for anyone involved. The waiter brought my hot chocolate without any cream on it, which I didn’t mind at all, and said so, but Philip insisted on rectifying the situation, to my embarrassment - which he noticed, causing him to attempt to recall the banished beverage by waving his arms about, which only resulted in his knocking his Americano into his danish and my dress. He gasped a series of appalled apologies and out came the awful handkerchief to dab my thighs. I protested (again, EWWW), but he mistook my hankie-fear for affront at his touching my legs, causing a fresh flood of increasingly despairing sorrying that was only stemmed by the distraction of another defective hot chocolate's arrival. Conversation, after this, barely got beyond 'I'm so, so terribly sorry, stupid of me - ' 'No, no, don't be silly, I'm sure it was my fault it got spilled anyway, don't worry at all...' 'Your fault? No no, not at all, uh, god, I'm so sorry, will your dress be alright..?' And so on.

Next, he took me for what ought to have been a lovely walk in Hyde Park to Speaker’s Corner, which he (interestingly, endearingly) likes. It was a good idea, but he tripped twice on the way there (prompting further redness and a coughing attack) and then both speakers were peddling the theory that education makes women bad at sex; a topic that made Philip stutter and me giggle hysterically. And then he was just so odd. Clearly a very intelligent man, with many fascinating life experiences to share, I nevertheless found myself painfully incapable of taking him entirely seriously. Because, at 37, he is taking ice-skating lessons. He saw Troy 6 times in the cinema, and can’t remember how often he’s watched it on DVD. He bemoaned for some yards of Hyde Park walkway the difficulty of finding tap-dancing shoes in his size in London. I almost yearned for Wanker Banker’s irritating obsession with convention, for a moment or two.

The final straw, though, I think for both of us, was when we were chatting amongst the daffodils and, in the process of talking, he spat, emphatically and unignorably, on my face. A terrible moment. I felt the saliva strike, and realised instantly that it had landed on a concealed beast-spot scar, which would complicate safe removal no end. It then occurred to me that there is more bacteria in the mouth of an adult human than in that of a dog, and that my skin was therefore in grave danger of further infection, the only silver lining being that the concealer might offer the pores a shield from the spit. Through these considerations, I became aware of a further threat: the handkerchief. There it was, out of his, presumably very snotty pocket, and moving threateningly towards my face. My involuntary look of disgust, high-pitched squeak and slight step backwards were like an awful, black full-stop on the date as a whole. I fear we both went home depressed, he presumably to blow his nose, and I to Yin Yang my spitty skin into near oblivion. Death.


But I'm giving you the most awful impression of poor Philip, who was actually very, very nice, and told me all sorts of things about Baudelaire and showed me the statue of Byron at Hyde Park corner (who knew!). And then he sent me the sweetest text message, saying he’d like to see me again, but 'would understand if I’d rather not'. Ahhhh! So obviously I said I would – just not for another date. I’m sure he’ll be better at friendly lunches. And as for my Wanker Banker yearnings – I hear through a mutual friend that he went to work defiantly suited all this week and may be in some trouble for bludgeoning several protestors with his briefcase, presumably whilst humming Flight of the Valkyries and imagining himself in Vietnam. Cringe.

Green shoots

Ahhh, spring. In so many ways the best of seasons. Barely a day goes by without my enthusing about the buds on the magnolia tree outside my house or the smell of cut grass, or the crocuses on the Heath, or the fact that when I leave work it's still just about light - or, indeed, any one of a number of such cliched spring things. Everyone seems so much happier. Even Mad Mary seems to have mellowed. Yesterday I submitted copy to her and, though she still made me stand there while she read it and scribbled on it, she managed not to say anything unnecessarily nasty, contenting herself with peering suspiciously at me, indulging in a rant about Richard (uber-boss, whom she clearly fancies) and telling me to get rid of the dirty coffee cups that had accumulated on her desk.

It's at times like these that I wish I'd spent my spare time at university doing unpaid internships instead of writing essays, but hey ho, she hasn't asked me to empty her bin using my mouth yet, so I suppose I oughtn't complain. Still, clearing away Mad Mary's coffee cups is a particularly disgusting task, I feel. It's not so much that it's demeaning, which I dare say I'd get over easily enough, but more that it's...icky. Mary, you ought to know, has a particularly offensive way of drinking coffee that seems to involve mouthing every bit of the rim of the cup liberally. I know this, because she wears very bright pink lipstick in quantities that make one wonder if her lips would still exist if she removed it, and EVERY time she uses a mug, every single millimeter of the rim is coated in the stuff. Also, she NEVER finishes a cup of coffee, she always leaves an inch or so of it at the bottom of the mug, into which she insists on dropping dirty tissues. Lord only knows what's wrong with the woman, but if a day goes by on which poor old Mary does not blow her nose, the whole office ought to be given a celebratory holiday. Picking those cups up, though, and seeing the snotty Kleenex floating in cold latte, and getting smears of her fuschia mouth-paint on my fingers, is an experience that leads to repeated resignation fantasies. One day...one day...

Anyway, I'm being distracted from the joys of spring by the 'vileness' (a favourite word of Mary's, incidentally) of my working environment. (Breathe, Alice! Think of the Regents Park daffodils!) And this is very wrong because, thus far, spring has been all it ought to be, so far as I'm concerned. My house-plants are flourishing, which always makes me happy, and I have been asked out twice in the last week, in spite of the mighty blemishes I wrote about in my last blog.

Speaking of which, part of the regenerationy springfulness of it all is my new skin-care program (YES! New Year's Resolutions ahoy!). On Sunday, I went for tea and a film (very, very brilliant, everyone should watch it - link below) with my lovely friend Cora. Cora took one look at my ravaged features and prescribed foundation. 'But Cooooorrraaaaaaa', I bleated, 'I've NEVER used foundation, I don't know hooooow, and then you have to take it all off and I'd probably forget'. She stared at me in disgust. 'Firstly, Alice', she began, patiently, 'it comes off when you cleanse - ' 'But Coooooorraaaaaa, I don't CLEANSE'. Her disgust deepened, visibly. 'Well you should!' she shrieked, 'do you WANT to have huge pores?' (A sensitive spot - I fear my pores, slightly). 'Nooo...but maybe just using water -' I gibbered, desperately. Anyway, the upshot of it is that she hauled me out to a pharmacy on Monday evening and made me buy some of the stuff she uses on her face - Yin Yang, link also below - because apparently it's chemical free and the science is good. (Cora knows these things, bless her.) So, I have commenced cleanse-tone-moisturise (which makes me feel all clean and new and leaves me smelling of oranges and flowers, mmmmm) and so far so good.

Which is just as well, because quite apart from The-French-Man-On-The-Bridge (asked me out on Tuesday; hmm, it's an unwieldy soubriquet, if he sticks around we may need another) and Escalator Man (who asked me out tonight and isn't especially good-looking but who DID lip-synch serenade me whilst carrying his adorable boxer-dog, admittedly the most attractive thing about him) there is also Mystery Barrister, with whom my friend Becky is arranging a blind date. (Becky is one of those girls with a high-turnover stable of high-quality studs and she has been offering to cast one of them my way ever since Wanker Banker hit the scrap heap.) Anyway, I have a good feeling about Mystery Barrister. His texts are excellent and I like his name. Oh yes, spring is in the air, and I mean to use it well!

http://www.ageofstupid.net/the_film

(not sure if it's showing again, but if it does you MUST see it)

and

www.http://www.yinyangskincare.co.uk/

(Ooo, I just looked at this; apparently the cleanser's won prizes and everything, how exciting!)

Hardly a spotless start...

I had a lot of New Year's resolutions. You know the kind of thing, a revolting mixture of the virtuous and optimistic that, looked back on at Lent, seems equally pitiable and humorous. I was going (of course) to give up refined sugar; I was going to do more creative writing; I was going to finally put a cleanse-tone-moisturise skin-care plan into action (my GOD, I'm 27, I have WRINKLES, what if it's too late already?); I was going to drink less and be more tolerant of my boyfriend's flaws, and find a job that involved more money and less envelope-stuffing, and learn Russian and stop procrastinating and exchange TV for Radio Four... Basically, my cunning plan was to metamorphose in one glorious year into a glossy-haired, fresh-faced model of competent, modern womanhood.

Well...at least I'm writing something. Three months late, but that's procrastination for you. As for the others...well, I made up the stuff about Russian and Radio 4 (c'mon, who'm I trying to kid?). I'm still stuffing envelopes with finger-bleeding regularity, whilst Mad Mary (bad bad boss) looks on with mad-eyed malice. And I'm typing this whilst gnawing on Green & Black's Creamy Milk Chocolate and planning a night of cocktail fun. (Not going well, is it?)

Also, I broke up with Wanker Banker Boyfriend on New Year's Day, in the midst of an argument (comical in hindsight) about the wallet I'd bought him for Christmas. He lost it at some time between 1 and 4 a.m. on January 1st, which some might think careless. Initially sympathetic, I grew angry when he made it clear that he was less concerned about my thoughtful gift than his Platinum Amex (the manliest thing about him, so maybe he had a point). I raised this (obviously very diplomatically), causing him to scream, in hoarse drunkenness, that: 'most girls would give their left arms to be going out with me' and 'you'll never earn enough to be my equal'. Err.... Right. Good to know. Apologies followed swiftly, but I was with One Republic on this point and felt it was significantly too late.

Boy, do I regret spending the money on his wallet, especially because now I feel too impoverished to splash out on my planned cleanse-tone-moisturise system. And, oh boy, do I need it. Not only do I have wrinkles but now, as a result of coming off the pill and the stress of plunging into the single world again, I also have spots. Not little ones with satisfying expustulation opportunities as compensation for their uglifying evil, but large, painful swollen ones that - I SWEAR - glow in the dark and leave purply-brown scars that require concealer-skill for months afterwards. Not handy when one hopes to re-enter the dating scene looking fresh-faced and youthful.

So, to summarise my condition at the end of the first quarter of 2009. Single, spotty, wrinkled and skint. And in the midst of a recession! Joy! Let's hope that a) I am somehow turning my woe into art, and b) I am actually some kind of human phoenix and, having crashed and burned so magnificently, I will now arise from my own pimply ashes, speaking Russian, publishing novels and throwing envelopes in Mad Mary's face whilst wearing a Vera Wang wedding dress and GLOWING with dermal health. Fingers crossed. I'll let you know, anyway.