LITMIR.BIZ

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clean clothes to take to his house for the weekend and then just as I was about to finally have a glass of wine, having to go and pick Jane up from the cinema because apparently the ‘bus hadn’t come’ – the same bus I assume that passed me heading out of town as I was heading in, as Jane seems to think if she misses the bus that is clearly the bus’s fault and it must have just not come and so I need to solve the problem. All while Simon was quaffing his ‘Friyay’ beer. And thirdly, who did the other beer belong to? Who? It could have been a work colleague, of course, but it was a wanky little bottle of foreign lager, not a Manly Pint, so equally could have been a girl’s. I realised I’d gnawed off what remained of my nails while scrolling through Simon’s photos. #SweetNewPad was another, with an arty shot of what must be his new sitting room (I couldn’t see the sideboard. Where was it? After all the fuss he made about me painting it, had he just got rid of it? RUDE). It looked very nice, and considerably more elegant than my own scruffy sitting room. But ‘#Sweet New Pad’? What was wrong with him? And he did realise you don’t have to hashtag every caption, didn’t he? Twat.

      I went to my own page to see what Simon might think if he looked at it. It was less than inspiring. The last photo I’d posted was a pile of boxes, simply captioned ‘Moving Day!’ I must try harder. I wanted Simon to seethe with jealousy at my sheer fabulousness every time he looked at it. Assuming he looked at it. Why wouldn’t he look at it? Apart from because he was too busy having mindblowing #Friyay sex with a wanky, beer-drinking twenty-three-year-old with gravity-defying tits and no stretch marks in his #SweetNewPad, of course. Oh God! That was obviously what he was doing, while I lay slumped on a sagging sofa, trying not to cry because me and my cannibalistic dog were both going to die alone and unloved.

In the end, in case Simon did find a minute out of his filthy shag timetable to look at my page and gloat he’d escaped the nagging witch of an ex-wife and remind himself of how much he was #lovinglife with his lithe sex bomb (who could probably contort herself into improbable positions without shrieking, ‘Wait, stop, I’ve done something to my hip’), I went and had a bath and posted a Fiona Montague-style shot with a glass of wine and about a million filters so it looked quite sexy, and put ‘The weekend starts here!’ It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could manage.

      Duly bathed (it turns out a bath isn’t quite so decadent when there isn’t much else you’re supposed to be doing), I was bored out of my mind and quite alarmed at the prospect of the many empty hours stretching ahead of me. I’d been so sure I had Inner Resources at my disposal and would be happy with my own company, but it seems it has been so long since I’ve had the chance to experience my own company that my Inner Resources appear to have buggered off, along with the perkiness of my tits and my natural hair colour.

      ‘Bollocks!’ I thought, as I failed to log in to Netflix, Jane having ignored my pleading texts for the password – Peter claims not to know it as he only watches YouTube. I wished I’d had the wit to have arranged to go out or meet friends or do SOMETHING tonight, but I’d been so sure of those Inner Resources I’d not bothered. I vaguely wondered about being an Independent Modern Woman and going to the cinema by myself, but I wasn’t sure I could eat a whole tub of popcorn on my own, and obviously the popcorn is the only reason to go to the pictures. And also, I’d have to put my bra back on. I gave up and returned to reading Riders. Since I was clearly never going to have sex again, I might as well read about other people doing it.

But then – oh hallelujah – the doorbell rang. Who could it be? I positively skipped to the door, filled with excitement. I was pretty sure it was probably some passing hunky farmer, who had popped by to tell me off for some Terrible Countryside Transgression I’d unwittingly made, and although initially he’d be very cross with me and I’d think him arrogant and overbearing, I’d still notice his Cambridge blue eyes and rugged physique as he sprang onto his tractor, and he in turn would in fact have fallen hopelessly in love with me at first sight, and would only fall deeper over the coming weeks as he berated me further for my charmingly hopeless country faux pas, until he could contain himself no longer and declared his undying love for me, just as I was feeling gloomy over a misunderstanding that had led me to think he was marrying the icily beautiful Lady of the Manor, but it was OK, it was me all along. It didn’t even really matter that I was in my jammies with toast crumbs in my cleavage, because everyone knows in these scenarios that the more grubby, dishevelled and deranged you look, the MORE likely the hero is to fall in love with you …

      It was a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Judgy, who could at least have earned his keep by seeing them off, refused to move from the sofa.

      I shuffled back, gloomy once more, to consider whether I could be arsed starting a seven-season American sitcom. The doorbell rang again. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were at least persistent in their desire to save my soul from eternal damnation, I reflected, but I still wasn’t really interested in hearing more about it. I flung open the door, ready to explain that it was all very well, but actually I was an atheist, and would THEY like to hear about MY beliefs about how there’s no God, THERE’S ONLY SCIENCE?

      On the doorstep stood a very welcome sight in the form of my lovely friends Colin and Sam, and Hannah and Charlie. Not quite a rugged farmer to fall in love with me, but probably much, much better, because, really, who could arsed with all the emotional upheaval of falling in love again?

      ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

      ‘Well, that is a nice way to greet your oldest and bestest friend,’ said Hannah.

      ‘We thought you might like some company,’ said Sam, ‘what with it being your first night on your own in the new house. It’s always a tough one, that first night without the kids.’

‘But how did you know?’ I said.

      ‘Oh, Jane told Sophie she was at Simon’s tonight,’ said Sam. ‘So we thought what better way to spend our Saturday night than by getting pissed with you and shouting “Bastard” about Simon in a supportive way.’

      ‘That does sound quite good fun,’ I admitted.

      ‘I’ll definitely shout “Bastard” the loudest,’ said Hannah.

      ‘And also,’ put in Colin, ‘we haven’t even seen your new house yet, so I’m obviously dying to conform to the gay stereotype by coming round and criticising your décor. But also what Sam said.’

      I do love Colin. Sam spent several years as a single father, following the departure of his dastardly former partner Robin, and after years of lurking around supermarkets (he read an article about it being a good place to meet men, but felt his trolley full of fish fingers and Petits Filous was off-putting to the singletons on the prowl in the produce aisle), a flirtation with Tinder (I don’t think Hannah and I helped there, we just kept shouting ‘No! SWIPE!’ every time he showed us a potential date/shag), a period of announcing he was Never Going to Find Love and thus was giving up looking and Focusing on His Inner Self (he pulled a muscle his first week at yoga and was thrown out of the class for shouting ‘Fucking hell, I think I’ve broken my arse!’, after which he accepted that his inner self preferred tequila slammers to Downward Dogs), he met Colin at the gym – ‘I’m almost afraid to tell people that’s how we met,’ he admitted. ‘It’s such a cliché.’

      ‘And Hannah told me I was to come and make myself useful, which I suspect will involve being sent for a takeaway and then driving everyone home. Which I think will actually be quite useful of me,’ said Charlie.

Oh lovely, lovely Charlie. Hannah’s divine second husband is so much nicer than her horrible first husband Dan, who was nothing more than a rancid streak of weasel piss. To my utter horror, I found myself for the first time ever thinking that maybe I should have made better choices in my life and married Charlie and not Simon, because once upon a time, at university, about a million years ago, when we were all young and foolish and irresponsible, Charlie had been in love with me, but with the callousness of youth I’d rejected good old dependable Charlie Carrhill for the dashingly gorgeous, romantic and slightly dangerous Simon Russell. Simon was so gorgeous back then. I think the very fact he noticed my existence was enough

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