"It's not going to work, Pam. She's a Winter."

"She's a Spring or I'm a tin of pears. I'm telling you. Now you go back to Mark's house. . ."

"But it's awful. We're all polite and formal and I look like a dishrag . . ."

"Well, we're sorting that out, darling, aren't we, with your colours. But actually it doesn't make any difference what you look like, does it, Mary? You just have to be real."

"That's right," beamed Mary, who was the size of a holly bush.

"Real?" I said.

"Oh, you know, darling, like the Velveteen Rabbit. You remember! It was your favourite book Una used to read you when Daddy and I were having that trouble with the septic tank. There now, look at that."

"D'you know, I think you're right, Pam," said Mary, standing back in marvellment. "She is a Spring."

"Didn't I tell you?"

"Well, you did, Pam, and there was me with her down for a Winter! It just shows you, doesn't it?"

2 a.m. In bed, alone, Mark Darcy's house still. Seem to be spending entire life in entirely white rooms now. Got lost with policeman on way back from Debenhams. Was ridiculous. As said to policeman, was always taught as a child, when lost, to ask a policeman, but somehow he failed to see the humour of the situation. When eventually got back, hit another Sleepy Pocket and woke up at midnight to find house in darkness and Mark's bedroom door closed.

Maybe will go downstairs, make myself a cup of tea and watch TV in the kitchen. But what if Mark isn't back and is going out with someone and brings her home and I am like the mad aunt or Mrs Rochester drinking tea?

Keep thinking back about what Mum said about being real and the Velveteen Rabbit book (though frankly have had enough trouble with rabbits in this particular house). My favourite book, she claims - of which I have no memory - was about how little kids get one toy that they love more than all the others, and even when its fur has been rubbed off, and it's gone saggy with bits missing, the little child still thinks it's the most beautiful toy in the world, and can't bear to be parted from it.

"That's how it works, when people really love each other," Mum whispered on the way out in the Debenhams' lift, as if she was confessing some hideous and embarrassing secret. "But, the thing is, darling, it doesn't happen to ones who have sharp edges, or break if they get dropped, or ones made of silly synthetic stuff that doesn't last. You have to be brave and let the other person know who you are and what you feel." The lift was now stopping at Bathroom Fittings and Fixtures. "Oof Well, that was fun, wasn't it" she trilled with an abrupt change of tone, as three ladies in brightly coloured blazers squeezed themselves and their ninety-two carrier bags each in alongside us. "You see, I knew you were a Spring."

It's all very well for her to say. If I told a man what I really feel they would run a mile. This - just to pluck an example out of the air - is what I feel at this precise moment.

1) Lonely, tired, frightened, sad, confused and extremely sexually frustrated.

2) Ugly, as hair sticking up in imaginative peaks and shapes and face all puffy from tiredness.

3) Confused and sad as no idea if Mark still likes me or not and scared to ask.

4) V. lovingful of Mark.

5) Tired of going to bed on my own and trying to deal with everything on own.

6) Alarmed by horrifying - thought that have not had sex for fifteen million, one hundred and twenty thousand seconds.

So. To sum up what I really am is a lonely, ugly, sad act gagging for sex. Mmmm: attractive, inviting. Oh, I don't bloody well know what to do. Really fancy a glass of wine. Think will go downstairs. Will not have wine but probably tea. Unless there's some open. I mean it might actually help me sleep.

8 a.m. Crept down towards kitchen. Could not turn on lights as impossible to find designer light switches. Half hoped Mark would wake up when went past his door, but he didn't. Carried on creeping down the stairs, then froze. Was big shadow ahead like man. Shadow moved towards me. Realized it was man - great big man - and started screaming. By time had realized man was Mark - naked - realized he was also screaming. But screaming much more than me. Screaming in complete, abandoned terror. Screaming - in a half-asleep way - as if he had just come across the most horrifying terrible scenario of his life.

Great, I thought: 'Real.' Then this is what happens when he sees me with mad hair and no make-up.

"It's me," I said. "It's Bridget."

For a second I thought he was going to start screaming even more, but then he sank down on the stairs, shaking uncontrollably. "Oh," he said, trying to breathe deeply. Oh, oh."

He looked so vulnerable and cuddly sitting there that could not resist sitting down next to him, Putting arms round him and pulling him close to me.

"Oh God," he said, nestling against my pyjamas. "I feel such an arse." It suddenly struck me as really funny - I mean it was really funny being terrified out of your wits by your own ex-girlfriend. He started laughing too.

"Oh Christ," he said. "It's not very manly, is it, getting scared at night. I thought you were the bullet man."

I stroked his hair, I kissed his bald patch where his fur had been loved off. And then I told him what I felt, what I really, really felt. And the miracle was, when I had finished, he told me he felt pretty much the same.

Hand in hand like the Bisto Kids, we made our way down to the kitchen and, with extreme difficulty, located Horlicks and milk from behind the baffling walls of stainless steel.

"You see, the thing is," said Mark, as we huddled round the oven, clutching our mugs trying to keep warm, "when you didn't reply to my note, I thought that was it, so I didn't want you to feel I was putting any pressure on. I-'

"Wait, wait," I said. "What note?"

"The note I gave you at the poetry reading, just before I left."

"But it was just your dad's 'If ' poem."

Was unbelievable. Turns out when Mark knocked the blue dolphin over he wasn't writing a will he was writing me a note.

"It was my mother who said the only thing to do was to be honest about my feelings," he said.

Tribal elders - hurrah! The note was telling me that he still loved me, and he wasn't with Rebecca, and that I should ring him that night if I felt the same and otherwise he'd never bother me with it again but just be my friend.

"So why did you leave me and go off with her?" I said.

"I didn't! It was you who left me! And I didn't even bloody realize I was supposed to be going out with Rebecca till I got to her summer house party and found myself in the same room as her."

"But ... so you didn't ever sleep with her?"

Was really, really relieved he had not been so callous as to wear my Newcastle United underpants gift for prearranged shag with Rebecca.

"Well." He looked down and smirked. "That night."

"What?" I exploded.

"I mean one's only human. I was a guest. It seemed only polite."

I started trying to hit him around the head.

"As Shazzer says, men have these desires eating away at them all the time," he went on dodging the blows. "She just kept inviting me to things: dinner parties, children's parties with barnyard animals, holidays-"

"Yur, right. And you didn't fancy her at all!"

"Well, she's a very attractive girl, it would have been odd if . . ." He stopped laughing, took hold of my hands and pulled me to him.

"Every time," he whispered urgently, "every time I hoped you'd be there. And that night in Gloucestershire, knowing you were fifty feet away."

"Two hundred yards in the servants" quarters."

"Exactly where you belong and where I intend to keep you till the end of your days."