He arrived in the building today at the same time as me, carrying a cup of takeaway coffee, which means he has some standards and is unwilling to drink the horse piss that comes out of the coffee machines we have here. Although I don’t drink coffee since reading that it disrupts absorption of proteins and vitamins, I smile at him in the lobby in a way that says ‘I see and approve of your choice of hot beverage, please feel free to ask me for a date and I can tell you at great length about my diet and exercise regime, you don’t think I was born looking this gorgeous, do you?’ He looks back at me in a rather watery way, which is not good. By the time I get to my desk I have decided that it’s all over between us, that he is a weak personality with addictive tendencies and that it could never work.

I don’t see him for the rest of the day which is probably just as well because Anna and I are supposed to be working on a fairly important new pitch which if it comes off could be good for both of us, what with appraisals around the corner, so we opt out of the human race and join the drones with our heads bent over our desks, although obviously taking time to email each other every five minutes and discreetly checking our Facebooks on a need-to-know basis. It’s perfectly possible to create first-rate online marketing strategies and do social networking at the same time. It’s called multitasking, which is one of the skills for which they employed me.

I have not mentioned to anyone in the office apart from Anna that it is my birthday today and so I am not too upset that there are no cards or flowers. However at three o’clock Anna pushes a very small, very elaborate box from her desk to mine, and at that precise moment an email pings into my inbox saying ‘Happy Birthday Fatso’. I open the box and there is a perfect miniature chocolate ganache cake, exactly the sort of thing that she has heard me fantasising about a thousand times a day for the last two years. On top there is a letter R in pink icing. ‘Go on,’ says Anna, ‘indulge yourself for once in your life.’ I am tempted to stuff the whole thing in my mouth in front of the entire office, making pig noises while I do so, but I would never hear the last of it. She is watching, so I take a bite, chew and even swallow, which satisfies her, and she gets back to work. I still have the taste of chocolate in my mouth, however, which is activating all sorts of addiction centres in my brain, and so I go to the kitchen and make myself a cup of nettle tea, which is enough to spoil anyone’s appetite.

At five o’clock I get a text from Jonathan saying ‘Happy Bday 2 U, squashed tomatoes & stew, U look like a hamster & ur hung like 1 2’, and then it says ‘Barcode 7.30’ which is where we are meeting for tonight’s magical mystery tour in honour of my special day. So at six I switch off my computer and pick up my kit bag and am just heading off to the gym when I see New Boy coming through the office again, this time he’s looking around as if he wants something, and when he sees me he smiles and sort of half waves, which is a bit pathetic. He looks a bit scruffy this evening, and I’m fairly certain that the suit is not Agnès B or Paul Smith but Marks and Spencer or even Next. I look straight through him, throw my bag over my shoulder in a way that shows my arms to good effect and walk out.