he doesn't want to help - that he was pushed into doing this out of duty but even so…
I can't settle. Even though I wanted a break from Charlotte it seems so strange to have the house to myself. I don't know what to do any more. I don’t know who I am without him.
I lie on my bed and I see my journal but I’m sick of writing it all down. It doesn't really help. I read it back and it's all completely mad–I'd die if someone else saw it.
I go to the back of my wardrobe to the secret I've got hidden there - a box that’s still unopened. It took 3-4 business days to get here and nearly seven weeks to open. I take it out and it is the ugliest thing I have ever seen but everyone swears by them and it has been so long.
I'm scared it won't work to tell the truth, that the sexy young me has long since died and that that part of me has gone.
I know what I did with Noel, but I don't think I came. I know I didn't. I wanted him to, if that makes sense. All I wanted was for him to want me.
I put it back in its box. I'm not using it and it didn’t come with batteries anyway.
Then I change my mind.
Like an addict looking for its fix, I go through the drawers and the cupboard and search for batteries but there are none - in the end I take them out the remote control.
What do you do with it?
I lie there feeling stupid - I knew it wouldn’t work - maybe if I think of someone it would help. I rummage through my mind and play my usual game of Celebrity Squares. Okay, I’ve got one - I'm a young and good looking Susan Boyle and there's that judge, what's his name? His jaw drops as I walk out to sing.
Then I stop.
I don’t like that I’ve entered the competition, that’s lame…
Why do my fantasies have to be so complicated?
Right, I try again. I’m a good looking Susan Boyle and I didn’t formally enter the competition, I was just singing as I walked down the street and they begged me to enter. They were short of contestants and the competition couldn’t go ahead if I didn’t come and sing and everyone would be so disappointed. Luckily, yesterday, I’d been waxed and I’ve tried on this amazing body oil, so I smell fantastic, I look amazing.
Okay!
I start to relax, to go with the flow, so to speak. I stop trying to figure out the hows and whys. What was it that Jess said? That Luke bought a vibrator for her.
Does he use it on her?
I can't imagine Luke like that, he’s so stern and staid. I can't imagine him kneeling over me, smiling down at me, enjoying watching me.
Except, I am!
I open my eyes and I can see him over me - my hands are roaming my body, except they’re his. I have to stop because I can't think of him like that, I can't do it to me and I can't do it to Jess… its wrong, wrong, wrong.
I’m in my kitchen, no, I think it’s his kitchen, because I recognise the fridge. I’m wearing that dress, the red one with the silver flowers. I’m at the sink drinking water and he’s coming up behind me, his mouth is on my neck and he turns me around and his hands slide over my dress. I shiver because, in my fantasy, it wasn’t loathing that walked in the kitchen that night, it wasn’t disgust that crept up behind me, it was lust, it was want. It’s as if I’m feeling it from him now - replaying it through his eyes.
‘No!’ I push him off, I get out of the kitchen and back to my bed and I try to get back to the stage and impress the judges, but there he is again. I’m walking past and he grabs me, I can feel the metal of the fridge on my back.
Then, I’m lying on the bed with Jess.
Their bed.
And, we’re going to have to learn to share him.
‘Fuck off!’ I tell him.
‘It's a fantasy,’ Luke tells me and he’s terribly stern - he’s wearing a business shirt but it’s unbuttoned and open. I don’t know where he is, because he’s not in the bed with Jess and me now and we’re not in