Excuses, Excuses; Procedural Dating; – and Goodbye, Freddie

Well, it’s been a while since I blogged – naughty, naughty Alice – but, in my defence, it wasn’t entirely my fault. In fact, for quite a while – up until mid January – it was Freddie’s. Remember him? Scruffy, documentary film-making alpha male for whom I was last seen falling head over heels? Yup, well, it turns out that Freddie does not approve of blogs, and certainly not blogs mentioning him. Here’s the short story (which, till Freddie stopped me, I was going to post back when it happened) with recap notes:

It was the morning (or two) after the night(s) before. I was confessing to Laura (rather inopportunely on the landing) that I’d slept with Freddie, our flatmate whom I was supposed to loathe. Her face was unexpectedly tragic, eyes and mouth wide with something I initially assumed was horror. ‘How COULD you, Alice?’ she wail-hissed, rather to my surprise. ‘Um, well, it just sort of happened, you know,’ I stuttered, somewhat taken aback, ‘it turns out that some of the tension was sort of sexual tension and I think I like him, so…’ I trailed off, guessing from the now abundantly flowing tears that I wasn’t helping. ‘But – but – you hate him’, she sniffed. ‘Nnoo, I like him’, I corrected, again, ‘and to be honest I don’t understand why you’re so grossed out by this because I thought you liked him too.’ A gulp of air. ‘I DID like him!’ Wails. Dawning comprehension. ‘Oh God, Laura, I’m so sorry, I had no idea you liked him like THAT, I really didn’t – I mean, you have DAVE’. ‘DAVE??’ she snapped, apparently infuriated by the idea of her own boyfriend. ‘How can you throw DAVE in my face at a time like this? You KNOW we haven’t been getting on. You KNOW how bad I feel about DAVE.’

At this point Freddie emerged from his room, kissed me on the head, smacked me on the arse, failed to look at Laura at all, and went downstairs. Pyjamas, topless. Laura sighed after him, and then started crying properly. Trying to ignore the ugly little Dave-worms that had wriggled excitedly free of their can, I tried to point out that however she felt about Freddie, he quite clearly liked me, so really there wasn’t much I could do about the situation. ‘Oh, really, you think you’re SPECIAL, do you?’ she screamed, apparently forgetting he was downstairs, ‘We KISSED, did he TELL you that?’. This was bad, because he hadn’t told me anything of the sort. ‘What?’ I asked, hissing snakily now myself, though fortunately too incensed to cry. ‘Oh, I thought not’, she howled triumphantly, ‘yes, we KISSED.’ ‘When?’ I squeaked, feeling like I might throw up. Freddie suddenly appeared on the stairs, and my head threatened to explode with the farcicalness of it all . ‘Alice, babe, that is not true’, he said, looking deeply annoyed, ‘Laura, you kissed me, and I told you I was with Neenee,.’ ‘NEENEE’, I huffed out, involuntarily. Freddie stared at me in surprise. ‘Ally, you met her, you know, Neenee’. Me: ‘Ugh, shut UP’. Freddie: What the FUCK, Alice? ‘Oh, whatEVER’, Laura broke in, ‘we KISSED.’ ‘No you DIDN’T’, I snapped, losing patience with both of them, ‘and Freddie, you really ought to have warned me.’ ‘WHY?’ he erupted, ‘She was off her face, I thought she’d forgotten’.

This was better, but hardly acceptable. ‘Because’, I stammered, suddenly at a loss for why he ought to have told me, ‘because you can’t sleep with people your friends have kissed!’ (That sounded broadly correct). ‘Because THIS happens!’ And THIS was terrible. ‘I don’t even fancy her,’ Freddie snapped, ‘it is not MY fault she jumped on me’. ‘Oh get OVER yourself’, Laura shrieked, apparently losing it altogether, ‘you know Alice didn’t even LIKE you when you moved in, she thought you were DISGUSTING, have you READ her BLOG?’ Bad. Very bad. ‘WHAT? You write about me on the INTERNET?’ Freddie roared, strangely sexy in his anger. ‘WHERE’? ‘Oh just google Alice Keates’, Laura cackled, grinning at me madly as I trembled in shock. ‘Freddie’, I wailed, running downstairs after him, it’s not that bad, it’s nothing you don’t know already, it’s really not’.

Anyway, the rest is history. Laura moved out to live with DAVE, telling him everything that had happened, and telling me that she never wanted to see me again, whereupon Jamie’s friend Ed moved in. Freddie read the blog and, though he agreed that what I’d written was quite funny and generally flattering, said he was not going to put up with my writing any more about him at all. This gave me writer’s block of a more general kind, and so I stopped. Sorry. But, here I am again, because a couple of months ago we broke up – I know. How can it be? Ours was a true love etc etc. Well, he moved to Kenya to talk to wild beasts and so forth and I stayed in London and since things hadn’t been great for a while anyway, that was that.

In the meantime, Mad Mary has continued her reign of terror, carefully whittling down our team until only I remain, there every night until ungodly hours, labouring beneath huge stacks of paper and electronic missives while she gads madly about with her new boyfriend (HOW? HOOOOWWW?), Limp Peter. ‘I just want to have seeeeeeex’ Mary moans at me every morning, gripping my arm with one of her claws and staring crazily up at me, ‘but Pete thinks we should waaaiiiit. Do you think that’s weird?’ ‘Err…I think it’s very…respectful’ I suggest, daily, wishing he would man up and sort her out before she breaks one of my wrists.

Since Freddie’s abrupt departure/ABANDONMENT, my love life has been…patchy. First there was the inevitable drink with Vile Alex, the Wanker Banker. He talked about himself for two hours, and then groped me in an alley way off Carnaby Street, calling me Zoe by accident. I went home, showered for an hour, layered on half a tub of my Yin Yang Rich Skin Food in a bid to see off the effects of the stubble-rash (quite successfully) and vowed (for at least the ninth time) never to see him ever ever ever again. Till the next time. Then I went on a date with Simple Simon, the good looking but boring boy I go on dates with between every relationship to remind myself why I shouldn’t go on dates with him. He talked about nothing, and didn’t grope me, and I felt too guilty to let him pay for dinner, so it was expensively dull hour. Next I went on the obligatory post-break-up blind date with a friend of a friend. He reminded me, pleasingly at first, but decreasingly so as time went on, of a Rottweiler. After two dates his severe behavioural problems and urge to growl at waiters became too troubling, however, so I decided not to see him again. Just as well since he called our mutual friend crying in the night a week later to tell him that he liked me but felt too guilty about his ex girlfriend to do anything about it. Issues.

So much for procedural dating.

Next time: The Monster.

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.