Melissa Kite

Sadly, I was being over-optimistic when I declared that if all went well with the builder boyfriend I would never need Stefano the Albanian again. It turns out that  I never stopped needing Stefano. I needed him while I was dating the builder, because builders never do any building work in their own lives — a case of ‘builder, renovate thyself’ — and I need him more than ever now that the builder and I have decided it is really not working out. When I had to move furniture to the new country place it was Stefano, therefore, who transported the items from London to Surrey. As we made our way down the farm track, Stefano following my little Fiat in his white van, I pulled over to chat to the gamekeeper.

My nerves were already shot to pieces when my phone rang and a faint little voice said, ‘Hallo, this is Vodafone, we’re just ringing to let you know we’ve got some offers for you.

‘Have you been flossing?’ The four most terrifying words in the English language. The dental hygienist peers down at me through her scary goggles and speaks in a strange, muffled voice through her mouth mask. Despite all the face furniture I can see that she is arching her eyebrows. ‘Have you been flossing?’ I’m more inclined to lie in answer to that question than in response to any other situation, no matter how intimidating. The time the banker boyfriend had me cornered in his swanky mews house and was throwing a wobbly about my phone ringing late at night was a doddle in comparison. I’d rather account to an irate City boy screaming ‘Who was that on the phone?’ than a dental hygienist asking ‘Have you been flossing?

After a lot of false starts, I am now the proud occupant of a small weekend rental in the country. It is very exciting. No more commuting from Balham to Cobham to ride the horses. I wake up on Saturdays in a converted barn down a farm track and drive two minutes to the stable yard to see Tara, Grace and Darcy. The three mares have now moved from their expensive livery yard to what we horse-owners rather disingenuously call a DIY yard. I say disingenuous because it’s not really DIY. A nice lady called Sue looks after them on weekdays and I ‘do them myself’ at weekends. Somehow, it saves a lot of money. I had to move from the livery yard in the end because, despite the high prices, it was turning into a right dump.

The new rabbit is turning into a bit of a slob. The other day I caught her trying to order a takeaway. I had opened the rabbit enclosure to let the two bunnies run around the kitchen and when I came back a few hours later, there were no fewer than 18 takeaway menus scattered across the floor. They had been tucked away at the back of a shelf but Wendy Pink had pulled them all out and was sitting among them perusing, by which I mean she was very deliberately picking up a menu from the pile, setting it to one side, looking down at it for a few moments, then repeating the exercise with the next menu. She was trying to decide between Lebanese, Cantonese, two different Chinese, three Indian, a Nepalese, seven pizza places, Japanese, and a list of Flavas fried chicken meal deals.

Throwing oneself at the feet of the transport secretary at a posh lunch is not a dignified thing to do. I realise that. But since my parents found out that the HS2 rail link is going past the end of their garden — though just a few metres far enough to mean they won’t get compensation — I have not been feeling very dignified. And before some Lib Dem blogger reports me to the Standards Commissioner for lobbying, I didn’t lobby. I begged. On my knees. There’s a difference. Poor Patrick McLoughlin didn’t know where to put himself. There he was, having a perfectly nice time at the Savoy, when a suicidal woman in a bright red dress threw herself in front of him like he was an oncoming train.

When it is too painful to go forward any more, it is time to go back. And so it was that I found myself in the Oxfam bookshop down a little cobbled street, buying second-hand vinyl records. I had not gone into the Oxfam bookshop to buy vinyl records. I had gone in to see whether they stocked such a thing as a desk diary. I have been having an awful time since 1 January searching in vain for this most obsolete of items — an A4, one-page-to-a-day, wide-ruled desk diary. ‘Why don’t you just put all your appointments in your BlackBerry like a normal person?’ said a girlfriend snootily. ‘Because I don’t want to. I want to write them down. Then, when I look back over the pages in the months or years to come, I can orientate myself.

Sitting opposite me in an elegant restaurant, my male friend looked deep into my eyes and said three little words. And with those three little words, he changed my world for ever. ‘You need Swarfega.’ ‘Swuh…swuh…’ I said, feeling a lump forming in my throat and my whole identity crumbling. ‘Swarfega. You know, the heavy-duty hand-cleaner in the red and green tubs. You can buy it on the internet.’ I looked down at my hands. But they weren’t there. Someone had put the hands of Albert Steptoe on the ends of my arms instead. ‘Oh my god! Where have my hands gone?’ I gasped. The waitress came and topped up my water glass but she needn’t have bothered.

‘They all have very distinct personalities,’ said my friend Hannah, as she invited me to come to her house and pick a bunny. In truth, I hadn’t given much thought to the preferred personality of my forthcoming rabbit. I confess I wanted a quick fix of a bunny, a companion for Tinkerbell Butch Cassidy, so called because she started life as a girl and then morphed into a boy when, upon closer inspection, I panicked and declared the vet’s earlier pronouncement misguided. Tinky had been bought as a companion for TT, the two-tone bunny I found in a box by the side of the road. They had been happy when I thought they were boy and girl, and just as happy when I declared them boy and possible boy.

‘What do you mean, your ex-ex-boyfriend is still living with his ex-girlfriend?’ said my friend Sarah, pulling a disgusted face. To summarise the many questions that followed, this bosom buddy of mine dared to ask me to explain why I was now referring to The Builder as my ‘ex-ex-boyfriend’, and why said ex-ex-boyfriend was still living with the girlfriend he was going out with before he met me. Talk about impertinent. Sometimes my married friends give me absolutely no leeway for how complicated modern romance is. They have no idea what singletons have to cope with in this godless age. The last time they were single, women used to be ‘courted’ or go on ‘dates’, or get ‘marriage proposals’.

Shortly after rekindling my relationship with the builder boyfriend, I had another hair-brained scheme. I brought the mad chestnut mare in from her retirement field thinking that while I’m U-turning on crucial decisions with Cameronesque ease, I might as well review my policy on horses, as well as men. The mad chestnut mare is 25 and murderously bad-tempered. Age has done nothing to mellow her. The staff at the stables call her ‘the old bag’. She is like an elderly relative in a nursing home who derives perverse pleasure from giving the people who look after her hell. Whenever I turn up, I am greeted with comments such as: ‘The old bag was kicking the door for her breakfast at six this morning.’ ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry.

The renovations were too much for me. I had to get the builder boyfriend back. But before you call me weak, manipulating, cheap, pathetic, or (if you’re into American self-help books) co-dependent, just hear me out. I defy anyone to go through what I went through with a consignment of ill-fitting MDF and not make a panic-stricken phone call to an ex-boyfriend who happens to be a building contractor. And it’s not as if I rekindled the relationship entirely in order to get my house halfway back to habitable. I missed him. I missed his funny south London builder ways. I missed his deafeningly loud laugh, his tousled, blond,  dust-filled hair, his weather-beaten face and soulful blue eyes. I missed the way he wears T-shirts when it’s minus four.

Never turn your back on builders. I only nipped out to walk the dog. I was barely gone half an hour. When I left I had one good room. The spare room. The only nice room in the house. I really love the only nice room in the house. I love the jasmine white walls, the beige carpet, the peaceful spotlighting, the satin curtains, the silk cushions, the newly fitted wardrobes. I keep it meticulously tidy because it is all I have got to show so far for my six-week-long renovations. The rest of the place looks like a bomb has hit it. The spaniel and I curl up on my overpriced Ikea day bed in the only nice room in the house and dare to dream. ‘One day, Cydney,’ I tell the spaniel as she snoozes, ‘it will all be like this.