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…