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.