People are looking at me from the moment I walk into the office. My ‘trendy wardrobe has become a standing joke, particularly on a Friday, as it is today, when I tend to dress inappropriately, because I can’t be bothered to take my going-out clothes in my gym bag. So even though I’ve taken off the horrible check sports jacket, I’m still looking like I’ve stepped off the pages of my mother’s catalogue. Anna laughs openly when I get to the desk and says, ‘Don’t tell me, naff is the new chic,’ so I just sneer and say ‘bite me’ or something, because I can’t quite bring myself to explain that I’m wearing my neighbour’s dead partner’s clothes.

To my horror this would have to be the day that New Boy, who is no longer new but has got stuck with the name, decides to come into the office to do something to the fire doors, he’s the health and safety officer and his job seems to be to bore us to death with memos about how not to electrocute ourselves or have fatal accidents with staplers. He smiles and comes straight over to my desk, ignoring the fact that Anna is going apoplectic with mirth behind her screen, and says, ‘You look very smart today. What’s the special occasion?’ I can’t think of an answer at first, because if this is his idea of ‘smart’ then he is even more of a dead loss than I thought when I discovered that he really does buy his suits at Next.

‘Oh,’ I say, trying to sound dismissive but not completely hostile, ‘nothing, I just fancied a change.’

‘Well, it suits you.’

‘Thanks.’

Anna looks as if she might have an aneurysm.

‘Did you want anything?’

‘No, no. Just doing my … Is she okay?’

‘She’s fine. She’s under a lot of stress at the moment,’ I say. ‘Women’s problems.’ Anna has to get up from her desk and go to the toilet quite quickly.

‘Oh well,’ says New Boy. ‘I’d better …’

‘Okay.’ My phone rings; it’s Anna. I pick up, and New Boy walks off.

When he’s out of earshot, I just say ‘fuck off’ to Anna and put the phone down. It suddenly occurs to me that he might have heard me, and thought I was talking to him, and I feel terrible, but not that terrible, and then Anna comes back into the office and it looks as if she’s been crying, but I know it’s only with laughter.

‘You look smart,’ she says, in a flat, nasal, froggy sort of voice, but I don’t reply because my phone rings again and it’s Stuart.

‘Change of plan,’ he says, ‘I’m not going back to yours, I’ll pick you up at the gym tonight at seven.’

Shit, I realise that I haven’t got my gym kit, it’s in my bag that’s locked in the flat, and I need to go home at lunchtime and get it – and change my clothes.