Picture Imperfect - By Nicola Yeager Page 0,19

over her, and she’s been bouncing from one hot bf to the next since I’ve known her. I can only assume that she has ‘it’.

I sit down and switch on my computer, checking all my stuff while it goes through all the crap it has to do before it starts up. When I finally start typing, I must be hitting the keys exceptionally hard, as Kristin looks over and raises her eyebrows.

‘Bad journey in, Chloe?’

‘No, no. No. Just, er, the same as usual.’

‘OK. I won’t ask. You sit there fuming like you just sat on a cactus and I’ll complete ignore it. Your petty, uninteresting personal issues are nothing to do with me. You just go on taking whatever it is out on that poor little keyboard that has never hurt anybody and I’ll just sit here smiling to myself and admiring my razor-sharp perception of other people’s moods.’

‘Do you want a coffee, Kristin?’

‘What do you think?’

I get up and go to the coffee machine and get a coffee for Kristin and a hot chocolate for myself. Like everything that comes out of coffee machines like this, they don’t taste anything like what they’re meant to be, but at least they’re hot.

I hand Kristin her coffee and go back to my desk. I prop up one of Mrs Goddard’s handwritten missives next to my keyboard, so it looks like I’m doing something and swirl some hot chocolate around my mouth. My tongue recoils in fear. Kristin looks right at me, an amused expression on her face.

‘So. Is there anything you want to talk about, miss?’

I tell her about Mark and his sudden holiday and her eyes widen in theatrical shock. I’ve managed to convince myself that I’ve been very cool and laid back about all of this and that there’s nothing out of the ordinary about something like this happening. We’re a mature, adult couple in our early thirties. I’ve arrived at an emotional plateau with the whole thing, barring my mother’s ridiculous views on the subject.

But the expression on Kristin’s face as the tale unfolds is something to see. It’s as if my first reaction to Mark’s surprise announcement is manifesting itself on someone else’s face. She takes a gulp of coffee, pulls a face and shakes her head from side to side. She’s almost laughing.

‘The little shit!’

She pronounces it ‘sheet’.

‘Well, it’s only for five days like I said.’

‘Don’t make excuses for him. I’ve never heard anything so bloody outrageous in my whole life! Only five days? Let me get this straight. He left on Sunday and he’s coming back on Saturday? That’s a week in my book, not five bloody days. But I’ll tell you something: even if it was just one bloody day it’d be one day too many and that’s a fact, girl.’

‘Well, I thought, you know, he’s been working hard recently…’

I sound pathetic. I sound defeated. I sound like a mousewife from the 1950s.

‘And you haven’t? What’s working too hard got to do with this? I’ll tell you, shall I? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Zilch. You’re dumping him, of course?’

‘Dumping him?’

The idea had never occurred to me, mainly because I still can’t work out whether this is a serious, relationship-threatening event or not. Kristin’s personality can be so overwhelming that I feel I should say something quickly before she jumps in again.

‘Er, I, I haven’t…dumping him?’

I think that got my point across.

‘He’s a worm, darling. No one treats their girlfriend like that! God – can you imagine…’

Kristin rolls her eyes around, trying to think of some sentence or three that will break through her exasperation.

‘Try and imagine what he’d have to say if you went on an ex-bloody-otic, sexy holiday with an old university girl pal and a couple of hot guys? And the reason you were going on this holiday was just that you fancied it (pronounced ‘eet’) or apparently thought you deserved a nice break. You knew he couldn’t afford it, so you decided to have one without him with people who could! He would be quite justified in describing you as a major bitch. He’d almost certainly walk out on you.’

‘OK, but it wasn’t quite like that. His friend Danny had booked the holiday, and his friend dropped out at the last minute.’

‘Oh, well boo-hoo. So poor old Danny has to go on holiday to Greece for a week with a couple of girls. Poor old Danny. My heart bleeds for him.’

‘I think it had all been paid for and it was too