The Dating Detox Read Free Page A

motorcycle jacket with studs. Hair in a ballet bun, some scary black undereyeliner and a few careful minutes with my eyebrow pencil. (I’m obsessed with my eyebrows. They are my bête noire.)
    Outer Self is thus prepared for the day. Check with Inner Self. Inner Self is not as prepared. Inner Self would like to curl up at home and watch Gossip Girl on the internet all day, despite fact that Outer Self is old enough to play a mother on Gossip Girl.
    I eat a banana, standing up in the kitchen(ette), noting happily that my never-home flatmate/landlord Anna has left the dingy little 60s-era front room as pristine as ever. I’ve rented a room here for years. The shower is dreadful, the carpets are worn and the furniture hasn’t been changed since Anna’s parents lived here in the early 70s. But Pimlico is a good area: no real personality (it can’t decide if it’s posh/scuzzy/boring) but it’s about 15 minutes from Oxford Circus, home of practically every flagship high street fashion brand and tourist hell. My room is very quiet and light, Anna and I enjoy a good flatmate relationship (friendly without being in each other’s pockets), and it’s très, très cheap. She could actually get more for it, even given the shittiness of the place, but she doesn’t seem to care. Most of Anna’s time, when she’s not away for work, is spent with her boyfriend, who I’ve never met. I get the feeling she’s hoping to move out soon and in with him.
    I give the kitchen a quick once-over with a dishcloth, ignorethe huge pile of my unopened bank statements on the breadbin, grab my lucky yellow clutch and head out the door to the tube. I would try a skippy-bunny-hop on my way out the door, but I don’t think I can manage it today. Sigh.
    I swing into the newsagents to buy Grazia for a little pick-me-up. As I’m waiting in line, a 20-something guy walks in. He’s wearing rugby shorts and a T-shirt with ‘I taught that girlfriend that thing you like’ written across the front. I lower my gaze behind my sunglasses and check him out. Big strong thighs, good chunky knees like huge walnuts. Mmm, the rugby-playing man. Shame it comes with a predilection for obnoxious T-shirts and ‘boys-only’ nights out that end with pissing in the street.
    Break-Up No.2: Rugger Robbie. He played rugby—obviously—with some of the guys in my newly-arrived uni crowd, and after three months of random snogging, we started going out. Rugger Robbie was a classic Fulham rugby boy: easy-going and actually very sweet. You know the type: intelligent but not introspective, good humoured but not humorous. (Yep, the antithesis to Arty Jonathan.) We mostly hung out in our large group of friends; we were all earning money for the first time in our lives, and life was one long party. (Which was fortunate, as Robbie and I would quickly have run out of conversation at one-to-one dinners.) He shared a horrifically messy flat off Dawes Road with three other rugby guys, and got so shit-faced with the rugby boys every Saturday night that once I met up with him at the Sloaney Pony or Crazy Larry’s, I’d have to carry him home practically straightaway and take off his shoes and jeans for him. One time, I woke up to find him pissing on the curtains. ‘At least I got out of bed,’ he said apologetically the next day. For some reason, this didn’t bother me at the time.
    I liked Rugger Robbie despite his habit of getting apoplectically drunk because he just seemed so straightforward and familiar after the strange, intimidating pretensions of the East Londoncrowd. And he had a really, really good body. (Ahem.) So I settled into it and decided he was an excellent boyfriend, and was quite content with life. Until, after about three months of properly being together, he said, ‘I’m going to Thailand for Christmas. I’ll call you when I get back.’ And then texted me in mid-January:
    I met someone else in Thialand I’m sorry I’ll see you around
    Dumped via text.