petite anglaise

I’m sure it’s normal, a matter of days before a piece of me goes on sale in bookshops, to fall prey to the jitters.

So far, those who have read “petite” all said complimentary things. Admittedly these were people who were supposed to be on my side - agent, publisher, friends, family - but I’m also beginning to hear feedback from interviewers/reviewers and people in the book trade who’ve seen an advance copy. It’s surreal when they say they liked it. I’m never sure how to respond. I suppose I should say ‘thank you?’, although my first impulse is to say ‘really? Are you sure? Why?’

I think I’ve had to read and re-read my own manuscript so many times in the course of the publication process that objectivity went out of the window long ago.

However my jitters have nothing to do with Joe Public reading “petite”. My nervousness is centred on what one particular person will think of it. Of my work. Of me.

You probably think it’s odd that The Boy, of all people, hasn’t yet read it yet. To be fair, it’s not out of indifference on his part, it’s due to a combination of me not wanting him to read it until it was fully finished/copy edited/proofed/corrected and him saying he preferred to wait until it was printed in its final form, with its cover on. I suspect both of us were putting off the inevitable. But now that I have a whole carton full of hardbacks sitting on the floor at the foot of my bed the inevitable can be put off no more.

‘Nice paper,’ he said when he got home from work and I handed him a copy. ‘And look, they’ve embossed the writing, it stands out more than it did on that proof copy you showed me before…’ He paused, looked at me intently. ‘So, I’m allowed to read it now, am I? Finally?’

‘Yes,’ I said, chewing my lip. ‘But, um, not when I’m actually here. I mean, I couldn’t stand it if you were reading it next to me, giving me sidelong glances. It would be excruciating.’

Since we’ve spent every evening together since, and he works all day, he hasn’t had chance to open it yet. (The métro to work is exclusively reserved for the ritual of Libération.)

Why am I so nervous? Well, frankly I doubt the book I’ve written is really his cup of tea. His favourite authors are people like Álvaro Mutis and Borges, at opposite end of the lowbrow/highbrow spectrum. Then there is the language barrier, which means he will understand the gist of the story, but he’s the first to admit that he’s unlikely to fully appreciate my style or voice, and nuances of meaning will be lost on him.

Top of my worry list, however, is the ‘Too Much Information’ factor. Which is why one of my favourite masochistic pastimes, at the moment, is imagining The Boy’s internal dialogue as he turns the pages.

‘Ah yes, she can be annoying like that,’ he thinks to himself, a lightbulb flickering on above his head. ‘So it’s not just with me, then…’

or

‘Oh, she used that line on me once!’

or

‘Ew, that bit was corny…’

I decided to ask him to read it when I’m a safe distance away, in England in early March, busy with promotion and too distracted to think about Him Reading My Book. This means, of course, that I’m deferring the inevitable for another whole month.

And when the deed is done, if he doesn’t like it, what then? Would I prefer him to be honest, and explain why? Or should he lie through his teeth if he wants to continue sharing my bed?

I am surrounded by a dense, dark, oppressive fog. I can’t see it, touch it, smell it, but it is real to me.

I sensed it on the periphery of my day, quietly, ominously gathering force. I pretended it wasn’t there, at first. I blogged about my daughter, made some notes for an interview, bounced flippant messages back and forth with friends on gmail and MSN. I suspect there was a vague undercurrent of hysteria, of volatility in some of those exchanges, but mostly I was successful at cloaking it in humour, denying its existence, even to myself. Until Tadpole was safely in bed, and the evening yawned emptily ahead. I tried to read a book, but the words wouldn’t stick. The walls crowded closer.

Words like “sad” or “depressed” are hopelessly unequal to the task of describing something so visceral. There is a heavy stone in my chest, a shallow shortness of breath, a desperate fluttering in my stomach. My body shifts gears and slips beyond my control. It’s poised for fight or flight, there’s a pent up energy it can’t contain. The overriding - utterly irrational - impulse is to release the pressure by lashing out at someone I love in some petty, spiteful, childish way.

I take a bath and wash my hair. I tidy the kitchen, manically. I pour another glass of wine. Finally, just before I turn off the lights, I reach for my phone and type a text message worthy of a hormonal teenager.

The results are woefully predictable. I provoke anger and incomprehension.

There is no earthly reason for me to succumb to the undertow, right now, when everything in my life is about as perfect as I can conceive of. I have everything I could possibly wish for. This Boy. The Book thing. Financial security. Nine days out of ten I’m happier than I can remember ever feeling. Why is it then that I seem to be hardwired to try, periodically, to destroy everything I touch? When the rational me, the real me, I hope, knows full well that I’m being unreasonable in the extreme. And idiotic. And wrong.

Hunched under the bedclothes, arms around my knees, I press my dry eyes tightly closed, willing it to stop; hating myself with a fierce intensity. Feeling stupid, pathetic and small. Terrified that one day I will go a step too far and exhaust the Boy’s reserves of patience. That he will see even this explanation as an attempt to abdicate responsibility.

When the feelings refuse to recede, I try to drive them away with words. And this helps. Not a lot. But a little.

For the past nine months I have been living in a shadow. Impossible to shake off, a suffocating cloud of self-doubt hovered above my head, darkening my every thought, my every gesture. Impossible to conceive of meeting a man (or boy) while I felt so brittle, so unsure of myself. Impossible to really appreciate this new life of freedom from the constraints of the métro boulot dodo routine I’d been locked into for so long.

Writing “petite anglaise” has often been a lonely, fraught process - and this despite all the reassuring noises from my agent and editor whenever I sent them a few chapters to read. Because the hardest task of all was proving to myself that I could actually pull this off and produce a manuscript of which I could be unreservedly proud; a manuscript which would do petite anglaise justice. And so I worked, fretted, agonised and procrastinated. Writing - which seemed so natural when it was for the blog - had now become work. Why was it suddenly so much less enjoyable, I wondered? Why was my favourite pastime suddenly a cause for teeth grinding? When I wasn’t working, I fought to suppress the guilt that I should be. Even though, arguably, when I wasn’t actually writing I could have made use of my free time by going to the cinema, say, or taking in an exhibition, I found I simply couldn’t. Instead I sat hunched over my MacBook, a gnarly knot of tension between my shoulder blades, surfing the internet, but taking very little pleasure in doing so.

I alternately overate or fasted. My moods, which have always had a tendency to swing without due warning from one extreme to another, now spiralled even further out of control. I had panic attacks: heart racing, breath snagging in my throat. On more than one occasion, meeting Mr Frog for lunch, I noticed my hands trembling when I picked up my fork. Whenever I snapped at Tadpole, voice shrill, patience on a short fuse, I detested myself.

Seeking some sort of temporary respite from my anxieties, and from spending so much time trapped inside my own head, rewriting my past, I drank to excess whenever I went out. Regretted it bitterly the morning after, when temporary euphoria gave way to blinding headaches.

Then, one fine day in May, I gave birth to the second draft. And even before the feedback began to filter back to me, the cloud began to dissipate. Because while, undoubtedly, there is still work to be done, I’ve proved to myself - to my inner editor - that I am equal to the task. Thirty-four chapters, almost 100,000 words: a satisfyingly thick wad of paper, the sight of which gives me a thrill whenever my glance falls upon it.

The gestation period almost over, I began to relax. My posture changed, the tension left my limbs, my skin cleared. I began to enjoy my free time with a clear conscience; to live in the moment. I still party too hard, on occasion, but that brittle edge of desperation, of hysteria has gone. I found myself flirting again, re-discovering a side of my personality which has been in hibernation for the longest time. It’s like meeting an old friend.

And so I am hell-bent on enjoying this summer, revelling in my new-found peace, savouring the lovely, melty moments I have been sharing, of late, with the boy who lives a few doors down the street, but who I could so easily never have met.

Life is good.

As I sat on the métro on the way to see some girlfriends yesterday, a bag containing chablis, Nutella and maple syrup wedged between my feet, I couldn’t help thinking back to happier versions of Mardi Gras, and in particular the 2006 edition, in honour of which I threw a pancake party and invited a few friends* from work to my old apartment. It was the first and last time many of them got to meet the man I referred to on this blog as Lover (a pseudonym to which a few readers strongly objected, but I felt then, as I do now, that given just how much time we spent horizontal, the name fit very snugly indeed).

A few days later Lover brought my dreams of an idyllic life together in the Breton countryside crashing down around my ears. I picked myself up, carried on, and so much other stuff happened shortly afterwards that I really didn’t know how to feel anything other than numb for a while.

What this means is that I’ve now been single for almost a full calendar year. It’s a state of affairs without precedent, because after much racking of brains and counting of digits, I can say with absolute certainty that the last time I was single for a Whole Year was in 1988. Although to be fair, at that time I’d been single for a total of fifteen years and was breathlessly awaiting the arrival of my first proper boyfriend.

How do I feel about this? Well, of course I’d rather be happily alone than with someone who was wrong for me. And yes, messing around with few strings attached seemed like fun for a while, but now just strikes me as utterly pointless. As for online dating, I check in to look at my profile from time to time but can rarely muster up sufficient enthusiasm to actually reply to my emails, let alone drag myself out on a blind date.

I know that this year without a special (adult) person by my side has been really good for me, in some ways. I’ve built new friendships, invested a lot more in existing ones and spent lashings of quality time with my daughter. I’m sure I needed to be alone, for a while, and that I’ll appreciate sharing the good, the bad and the ugly with a special someone all the more because of it, when the time comes.

But am I truly happy with this state of affairs? Is single the best thing since the invention of Nutella? Is single the new size zero?

I’d be lying if I said I loved it. Single still doesn’t come naturally to me and I doubt it ever will. So please excuse me while I go and comfort myself with a large pot of leftover nutella, a useful side effect of which is that size zero will never, never fit.

I frown at my face in the mirror. Make-up still looks good in the right light, but increasingly these days I find that foundation accentuates the fine lines around my eyes instead of concealing them. I prefer myself with my glasses on, because actually they hide a multitude of tell-tale signs. The days when I dreamt of laser surgery are long behind me.

Digging out a selection of eye-shadow colours, I proceed by a process of elimination. The dark brown one I should really throw away, it’s too severe, too ageing. The pearly pale colours are too “teenaged”. Which only leaves a nondescript matt beige and a dusky pink. I choose the former, applying it lightly with a brush. Less is more. The last thing I want is to look like I’m trying too hard. My lips, full and pouty, if slightly chapped, respond well to a coating of lip gloss.

I survey the finished product. Not bad, but not quite me either. My mother used to say she felt the same inside at forty as she did when she was eighteen. I don’t feel the same exactly, but whenever I look in the mirror I think I always half hope to see my eighteen-year-old self looking back at me, and can’t help but feel disappointed that she is never there.

Padding into Tadpole’s room in stockinged feet I open the wardrobe and deliberate about what to wear. I have always been what I would call “pear-shaped”, often with as much as two sizes difference between the top and bottom halves of my body. Despite my New Year’s resolutions and recent gym membership, there are few visible improvements as yet. Now, the party I am getting ready for called for “something red” in the invitation. Hmm… A raspberry-coloured dress bought years earlier, which drapes in a forgiving way around my curves is the only red item in the wardrobe which strikes me as appropriate for a party. I might feel a little overdressed, and if I get cold my nipples will definitely show, but I don’t have time to agonise further. The babysitter will be arriving any minute.

Tadpole looks up from her book and smiles. “Mummy looks like a princess,” she says. And means it. I give her a grateful hug. Thank god for unconditional love.

Later, at the party my friend and I joke about the fact that we are actually several years older than most of the other guests present (understandable, as the hosts are in their mid-twenties).

“You can tell we’re older, because all these younger girls are playing it cool, dressing down, and here we are with our grown-up dresses and our faint whiff of desperation,” comments my friend, wryly.

“Oh god, don’t, my confidence is hanging by a thread as it is,” I reply, and proceed to enlighten her as to the meaning of the wonderful British expression “mutton dressed as lamb”, before helping myself to another glass of red punch.

I’m thirty-four years old, and until now, most people didn’t believe me when I told them my age, or gasped when I told them I had a three-year-old daughter. But something - and I’m not sure what - seems to have dented my confidence lately. Perhaps it’s because there hasn’t been anyone who I could get excited about for a while, no-one’s admiration to bask in. Or maybe it’s the fact that my last boyfriend was significantly older than me, and these days I often run with a younger pack.

From experience I know that it’s impossible to be objective about what you see in the mirror. On a black cloud day I can’t help but hate my reflection. In the throes of a hormone peak I will feel big, regardless of what the scales might read.

I’m looking forward to the day when the mirror throws me back something I like. It will be a sign that whatever was faulty has been fixed, that the storm clouds have finally lifted.

And in the meantime, I’ll just keep on basking in the warm glow of Tadpole’s compliments.

2006 was nothing if not eventful.

I got dumped.
I bought my first home.
I got fired.
I got outed.
I was given an exciting opportunity.

2007 should be a little quieter, less turbulent. A few important dates loom on the landscape. A hearing at the industrial tribunal on 19 February. A first book to deliver by 4 July.

But the thing which I’d most like to happen sometime soon, the thing I finally feel ready for, is the only thing that you can never plan. The thing which you can guarantee will only happen when you stop hoping; when you look the other way; when you least expect it.

I’d like to meet someone. Someone I can lose my appetite over. Someone who fills my head with silly daydreams. Someone who has the power to make me smile at complete strangers in the métro. Someone who doesn’t follow this blog, ideally, as I’d like to be discovered little by little, not offered up in one king-sized serving.

I spent much of 2006 keeping men I met at arm’s length, or pushing them firmly away. Partly, I suppose, because no single person I met was “all that”. Partly because I’d been badly burned and no longer dared trust my instincts. But also due to the simple fact that there was so much going on, so much that was new and terrifying that I wanted to come to terms with all the change before I let someone else in.

Taking stock, as 2006 drew to a close, I was forced to admit to myself that there is something a little empty about this life I’ve been leading. Spending hours alone, writing about events in my past, by day. Partying a little too hard by night, whenever the opportunity presented itself. I’m no fool. I see the binge drinking and bad behaviour for what it really is: a symptom of my malaise, escapism, a temporary stress release mechanism.

It’s time to set my life on a healthier course. Time to let go of my anxieties and enjoy the opportunities which have come my way. Time to let someone in, should a worthy candidate present himself.

Time for petite anglaise to take a step back and let me do the living.

“So, what do you do in Paris?” says the friend of a friend I’ve just been introduced to.

“Oh, I’ve been here for eleven years now, and I was a secretary for most of that time,” I say. “And now, I’m, um, writing this memoir…” I let my voice trail off in a way that will make it sound like I’ve just said the most boring thing in the world, hoping to nip any further questions in the bud.

“You’re slowly getting better at this, see?” whispers my girlfriend, with a wink.

“Well, maybe, but I’m still blushing, you just can’t see it in this light,” I reply doubtfully.

I live in constant dread of having to tell people just what it is that I do for a living.

Since April, the question has been one king-sized can of worms. (Can one buy cans of worms? Aren’t they maggots? For fishing?) Because “I’m between jobs right now” or “I got fired” usually snowballs into more questions, and yet more, until the whole grisly truth comes out. It’s long, it’s involved, and I end up feeling oddly like I’m being interviewed rather than actually making conversation.

Ever since contracts were exchanged and it all became terrifyingly official, I have no longer been able to truthfully play the chômeur card, and so now I have to admit, bashfully, that I am writing to earn my bread and butter. “Admit” probably isn’t the right word, but the only other phrase which springs to mind right now is “own up to”, which isn’t much of an improvement, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Of course if I mention writing, the questions come even thicker and faster. And although I’m going to be a writer, one day, when I’m published, I don’t feel like I own that title yet. So I play it coy, hide behind my hair a lot (at least until that fifth drink, when my alter ego takes over and I probably say something along the lines of “I’m a little bit famous, can I grope your bottom?”) and attempt to keep everything as vague as I can.

Because book leads inevitably to blog. And my name is now connected to this blog in every conceivable search engine. Nasty pictures taken by photographers in the pay of tabloids who were clearly given the brief that they should attempt to look down my top, or up my skirt, are on display. Anonymity, however relative and fragile a concept that was, is no longer an option. And that is not always a good thing.

Twice recently I received worried emails the day after meeting someone new, the senders fretting about whether they were about to find themselves the subject of a forthcoming blog post (they won’t, I don’t cross those boundaries without permission of sorts). And those are the ones who knew what a blog was before we met. Those people who don’t know must undoubtedly think I am some sort of narcissistic self-centred weirdo when they hear that I share slices of my personal life with the internet at large.

And yes, those people were boys. And yes, what I’m really concerned about here, is whether it will hamper my chances of success on the dating market, my chances of finding someone a bit special once I’ve got my current teenage phase well and truly out of my system. Because you’ve got to admit that things are a little unequal, not to say unbalanced, if menfolk that I meet are able to read about my whole life on the internet before our second date, a state of affairs that leaves me feeling at something of a disadvantage.

So, it will have to be a blogger. Apparently there are currently three million blogs in France, so hopefully at least a handful are not written by teenagers and girls.

I’ll keep you, ahem, posted.

“So, what was it all like, that stuff, back in July?” a few people asked me this weekend.

These were people I hadn’t seen for a year or more. People who had met me once (while tipsy) back in the days when I was being branded an internet adulteress and I had that slightly indecent, back in the saddle, new relationship glow about me.

Not an easy question to answer. My responses ranged from “scary” to “surreal” to “terrifying”, and I didn’t feel able to elaborate. But it got me thinking nonetheless. About everything I didn’t/couldn’t say at the time.

When I think back to the weeks that followed my unceremonious dismissal, I see myself at home, shutters closed, Tadpole (fortunately) with her grandparents. I was in pieces. Watching ten episodes of Lost a day, back-to-back, in my pyjamas. I had little or no appetite. Sleep was elusive. My hair hung in a gnarly, unbrushed ponytail. I shook like a leaf if I so much as smelt a cup of coffee. Kind friends invited me for cups of tea, and I spilled my guts, talking at one hundred miles an hour, high on adrenaline.

My life was a web of lies. Or, to be more accurate, withheld information. My readers couldn’t know I’d been fired because I wanted that news to come out only when I judged the time was right, and when I was sure that coming clean couldn’t cause me any additional harm. My notary, estate agent and bank manager couldn’t know I’d been fired, because I was still figuring out whether I dared sign my loan documents without disclosing my new circumstances.

I spent two months in limbo, consulting lawyers, worrying about whether or not there was any substance to the threats of legal action, regularly speaking to my journalist friend but asking him to hold off, yet simultaneously fearing that by July, it would be old news. I had mixed feelings about letting the story run at all; agonised over whether I had more to lose than I had to gain.

The story ran on a Tuesday, and I had no idea it would be the first of many until my phone started ringing, in the middle of my ASSEDIC interview, where I was sorting out my entitlement to unemployment benefit.

I was scheduled to move into my new apartment five days later, knee deep in boxes, flitting back and forth making final preparations. The new place had no internet access, so any time I spent there meant I was offline, unable to see how my story was snowballing across the web. I built wardrobes, took deliveries of appliances, and waited in for technicians while simultaneously fielding calls and giving interviews on my mobile phone in French and English.

Paris was in the throes of a heatwave, and I dripped with sweat every time I so much as changed a lightbulb. But in between the furniture assembly and deliveries I scampered back to the old flat down the road to approve hundreds of comments and scour a mountain of email for the important stuff that needed answering immediately. To change into any clean clothes I could find and have pictures taken by some photographer while my arm rested against a scalding hot balcony railing. I answered my emails at midnight, wrote a piece for the Guardian at 3 am, dropped Tadpole off with Mr Frog at 7 am so that I could have my picture taken for The Sunday Times in a café (photos never used, to my disappointment) while people all around me drank their first coffee of the day, nibbled croissants.

It was scary. Surreal. Terrifying. There wasn’t a single moment when I didn’t worry that in exchange for fifteen minutes of “fame” which no-one would remember a few weeks later, I would be left with a handful of yellowing press cuttings and no prospect of working as a PA in Paris again. When my full name was revealed - and I wasn’t stupid enough to think this couldn’t be found, just naïve enough to think that it didn’t add anything to the story and therefore people might respect my wish not to use it - I was left wondering whether the gamble had been worth it, after all. Journalists were sniffing around my home village, trying to find my daughter’s name, to contact Jim in Rennes, Mr Frog, and god knows who else. I felt exposed, picked over and extremely foolish for thinking that I could remain in any semblance of control.

I could only hope against hope that the emails coming in from agents and publishers represented some sort of genuine interest, although I didn’t have the time to explore those avenues just yet.

The day before I moved flats, there was a hasty trip to Ikea. Mr Frog and I had decided to make use of the van I’d hired (which he was driving), so that I could pick up a few things, and he could buy Tadpole a new bed and find some plants for his flat. We stopped for a snack; I knocked back an ill-advised espresso.

A few minutes later, in the lighting section, I had an enormous panic attack. There were people everywhere, but I didn’t care, all I wanted to do was let my legs go out from under me and curl up in a tight ball on the floor. My heartbeat was rapid, erratic; I couldn’t breathe. Stricken, I stared at Mr Frog, wide-eyed, unable to speak. I wanted to be hugged, for someone to whisper calming words in my ear. But Mr Frog couldn’t be that person. It was too much to ask of him. Instead I found a chair, put my head between my knees and took deep breaths until the feelings subsided. Not completely, but just enough for me to stand up and carry on, gripping the trolley with white knuckles.

I still get the panic attacks, although less often, less intense. Waterstones, Birmingham, August. An Italian restaurant in York, October. I always do my utmost to hide them from Tadpole, and whoever I may be with. Good things have happened since July and I feel lucky, grateful and slightly disbelieving in equal measures. But when every single thing in your life changes - your boyfriend leaves, you move house, you lose a job, find a new career - all in the space of six short months, it cannot fail to knock you sideways. It will take time to make sense of it all, to process, digest, and make it a part of who I am, not just something that happened to me.

I’m not quite there yet, but I hope I will be, soon.

I find myself strangely unperturbed that there are no men to speak of in my life at the moment.

A few month’s back, among the flurry of well-meaning comments and emails, a few people trotted out that old chestnut about how some me-time would do me good. That alone doesn’t necessarily mean feeling lonely; it can be a very positive, healthy state of affairs. I knew that there was some truth in these words, but at the time I was still feeling brittle, wobbly, and just a little bit lost at sea. Feeling good about being alone seemed remote and unattainable, and I wasn’t even sure it was what I wanted to aspire to.

After all, I’d been “with someone” for the best part of the last decade, and was terrified I could only function as half of a couple. And what was more, single motherhood was a concept I found terrifying, riddled, as it can be, with negative connotations.

But somehow, over the past few months, so gradually that I barely noticed, a subtle change wrought itself. And one day I realised I had finally arrived in that place people had spoken of. I have found a level of self-sufficiency I never would have thought possible. The ability to revel in my new-found freedom.

I feel whole. More complete than I did when I was living en couple.

The new apartment symbolises this new phase in my life. I chose it, alone. Pored over the paint colour charts, alone. Sanded the walls and painted them, alone. Decided on a kitchen plan, bought some new furniture. There will be no-one’s imprint but my own (and Tadpole’s, although if I’d gone with her paint colours, I do not think the outcome would have been a happy one).

On my Tadpole free nights, I seek out the company of friends. After dabbling a little with internet dating, I decided not only that I couldn’t be bothered to invest enough time or energy in it - whether it be to find a mate, or just to satisfy more pressing needs in the short term - but also that there simply isn’t enough of me to go round. And what time I have, I prefer to spend with friends, old and new, rather than stumbling tongue-tied through an interminable dinner with a stranger, secretly wishing we had arranged to meet for just a coffee instead.

So let the men cross my path, or not. I’m not actively looking any more.

In London recently, I marvelled at how my two good friends from university, who had been confirmed bachelors for many years, were now attached, whilst I was not. A surreal reversal of what had long been the status quo. And yet it soon became clear that in some ways they envied me.

One of them noted that because of Tadpole’s existence, I am doubly free. In his opinion, the fact that I’ve already had a child means my body clock has stopped its ominous ticking, and I am free to go forward, unhindered by those considerations. Choose a companion who doesn’t want children of his own without it being a problem, if I want to.

It was an interesting point, I thought, and not one I expected to hear. (Whether I agree, is another thing entirely, I’m not sure I do.) I always imagined single motherhood would be perceived by others as a life filled with constraints. A negative state of affairs. I have certainly been experiencing it as a positive phase of my life, but I didn’t think other people would fully understand.

Sometimes it makes me very happy to be proved wrong.

The hour is a little after midnight. I am fiddling around on my computer, trying to fill in a hellishly complicated ASSEDIC form for my nanny, whose contract is almost finished. I am loath to turn in, even though I am exhausted from a lengthy trip to Ikea, because I doubt I will be able to sleep, thanks to the jovial racket emanating from my neighbourhood’s football fans.

The conundrum is this: open the window and hear whooping, car horns a-beeping and, more worryingly, people singing along to something cheesy which I suspect may be Claude François, or slowly broil to death in my apartment.

I can’t escape the feeling I am being held hostage.

* * * * * * *

The year is 1998. Mr Frog and I are moving into our first shared apartment, on rue Richard Lenoir, a stone’s throw from Père Lachaise. The day has been uncommonly stressful, despite the fact that Mr Frog didn’t actually possess much in the way of furniture to begin with.

After delivering his belongings to the new flat, we made the mistake of heading off in the rented van to Ikea that very same day. Predictably, we buy half the shop, including elephant ice cube trays and a Klippan sofa. Arriving home, we realise that said sofa will not budge beyond the narrow hallway of our building, and certainly cannot be manoeuvred into the courtyard from which our apartment is entered. As it is a bank holiday weekend, a monte-charge cannot be procured for several days, and when it can, hiring it will likely cost as much as the sofa itself.

We also realise that we have missed the deadline for returning the van, and will have to pay for an extra day’s rental.

Hardly an auspicious start to our life together.

Once the tears have dried, I graciously allow Mr Frog to go out with some friends to watch the final, leaving me to unpack our belongings and assemble the remaining furniture. In peace.

Except of course for the small fact that France are playing in the final, and the streets are alive with the sound of men watching sport, loudly. I haven’t yet plugged in the television, but there is little point. There is no mistaking that sound people make when a goal is scored. No room for ambiguity whatsoever.

I know the score.

* * * * * * *

Eight years have passed, almost to the day, and I can’t help marvelling at the symmetry of it all. My imminent move, today’s trip to Ikea (and I don’t know what they put in those meatballs, but I believe they are evil, and am holding them responsible for all my retail bulemia), new beginnings…

As for the football, I resolve to wash and dry Tadpole’s Italia t-shirt dress, which is currently liberally smeared with ice cream fingermarks, in time for the final.

I keep getting this unnerving feeling of dislocation. As though I’m looking down from far above, contemplating myself going about my daily business with an unhealthy degree of detachment.

It’s like an experiment. Or some sort of test. The aim is to place myself in interesting, unexpected situations, pushing against my own boundaries, moving further and further away from the rather mundane, pedestrian life I led when I first started writing petite anglaise; all the while this other me quietly observes from afar, furiously scribbling, recording anything noteworthy.

Sometimes I wonder whether I am living my life, or whether this blog is living it for me.

How much are the decisions and choices I make affected by the fact that I will not only have to live by them, but, more importantly, will feel compelled to spin webs of words around them afterwards? To what extent can feelings, whether of pleasure or of pain, become artificially intensified by the very fact of groping for les mots justes with which to pin them down? Does the act of dissecting thoughts and motivations bring me closer to some sort of truth? Or, conversely, adulterate it so thoroughlly that I no longer know my own mind?

I suspect the fact that Tadople has been waking me at 6.00 am every day this week has thrown me off kilter. I’m tired. A little low. Vulnerable to an invasion of creeping, insidious doubts and prone to self-indulgent navel gazing. It’s just the way I am.

But let me pose a question to fellow bloggers all the same: do you think that writing your blog has changed you in any way?

I move slowly through the park, my steps perfectly in time with the music filling my head, hair buffeted by squalls of wind. The asphalt is coated with a thick layer of pale pink blossoms; the tiny flowers drift, confetti like, from the trees, into my hair, onto my shoulders. I flick at them, absent-mindedly, lost in my thoughts.

A year ago today, I wrote a post about leaving the father of my child. Re-reading those words now, it almost feels as though they were written by someone else. I suppose, in some ways, they were. The woman who wrote them had been sleepwalking for the longest time. She knew her life wasn’t making her truly happy - and writing this blog had helped her come to this realisation - but was terribly afraid she did not possess the strength to break away, start a new life. She was beginning to see the light: that being a mother didn’t have to mean burying her own personality, her own needs, deep inside; denying their very existence. That way only bitterness and simmering resentment lay.

There followed a turbulent year of dizzying heights and desolate lows, filled with an intensity I would never trade for a return to my old life. Out of the ashes of the relationship which ended in March stepped a woman who has finally learned how to feel comfortable in her own skin. Who has understood, at long last, that being alone can make a person feel more whole than being one half of an ill-matched couple.

Out of habit, I still lie on the right-hand half of the bed, rarely straying over the invisible line which divides it in down the middle. But I no longer sleep fitfully when there is no-one by my side. And the nightmares have left me.

I move slowly through the park, buffeted by the wind, music filling my head. And realise I am smiling at no-one in particular.

I choose my outfit, my undergarments with care, because I know from experience that a drink, with him, will lead to much, much more.

In the bar, I bask in the glow of his attention, happy in this moment, knowing full well it will be fleeting.

He seems most comfortable recounting anecdotes, in that theatrical way of his. His stories seem to form part of a cloak he draws around himself; a shield which I don’t even attempt to penetrate. Superficiality is an integral part of the unspoken pact between us.

I lie in bed, his sleeping body curled around mine, his arm around my waist, marvelling that someone can be so close, skin against mine, but simultaneously seem so remote, so inaccessible.

When we part the next day and I hear the words I fully expected to hear - “well, I guess I’ll see you in a month, when I get back” - I feel a twinge of something I was determined not to feel.

A brief pang of remorse that I may have been selling little pieces of myself to the lowest bidder.

A New Order obsessed fifteen year old is still trapped somewhere inside this thirty-something body: I will never cease to be a sucker for an old school synth.

Which goes some way, but by no means all, to explaining why instead of sleeping right now, I am listening to some freshly downloaded Tiga on my headphones with the bass turned all the way up, revelling in the richly layered synths of “High School” and wishing I could be on a dancefloor, eyes closed, skin tingling, letting the sound wash over me.

This petite anglaise wants to go clubbing. Soon. To let out all of that pent-up naughtiness fizzing beneath the surface. The only ingredient lacking at the present time is willing, like-minded partners in crime (as I can’t exactly ask Mr Frog and his gang any longer, can I?). Any readers who might be partial to electronica in the Vitalic/Tiga/Miss Kittin vein, feel free to drop me a line at the usual address.

Every day I don my mask and go about my business. On good days, the happiness is not merely skin deep, it wells up from the very core of my being. I smile with my lips, my eyes and my heart.

On bad days the cheerfulness is forced and brittle, a thin veneer so easily shattered, my smile almost indistinguishable from a grimace.

On in between days I flit between the two states, one second positive and confident; the next casting around for something, anything, to break my fall.

People tell me I’m supposed to be revelling in this single state. Making the most of the time I have alone to form deeper friendships, give more of myself to my daughter, to learn how to be simply me. Undiluted, uncompromised, no longer bending to the will of a partner.

There are days when all this rings true and the world seems such an intoxicating place. When uplifting music on my iPod will make me smile in the métro at no-one in particular; when I want to hug myself with childish glee. Ahead of me lie inviting blank pages just begging to be covered with lurid, bold strokes.

There are days when everything feels utterly pointless if there is no special someone to share things with. Someone who hangs on my words. Someone who holds me tightly and buries his face in my hair. Someone who cares deeply about what is going on inside this head of mine. Someone to whom I can entrust my soul for safe keeping.

The mad social whirl, the party clothes and negligent new underwear are just pathetic ruses. I use artifice to try to trick myself into forgetting what is really lacking. I feed on superficial pleasures to fill the void.

I may be fooling everyone else.

“Switch me onto standby mode,
Until someone presses play”

Happy Violentine - Miss Kittin

I was tempted to name my last post “epitaph”. A part of me had been brutally severed. My hopes, my dreams now lay smouldering on a pyre. It seemed fitting.

When I typed those brave-faced words, they were an expression of how I wanted to feel, a few days or weeks or months from now. Something to aspire to. Then, somehow, after hitting the “publish” key, I realised I was genuinely beginning to feel that way.

Taking a step back, looking critically at the last few months, I see that much of my time was spent waiting, feeling despondent about being apart, dealing with the guilt of Tadpole’s impending separation from her father, smothering my doubts with a pillow. Negative feelings which crushed my spirits with all their ominous weight, preventing me from enjoying the here and now.

Now I find myself appallingly fragile, but intact, and somehow lighter. I no longer have to do battle with those demons any more; the weight has lifted. Only now do I see, with startling clarity, how impossible it was to continue following that ghost of a dream.

All the same, much of the past few days remains a blur. As I go about my daily business, my mind is elsewhere, playing my favourite memories in a continuous loop, until I’m ready to lay them to rest. On the surface, I laugh and joke, say positive, brave things, make plans for Tadpole and me. I’m going to buy a little flat, I say. On a whim, I’m going to the South of France for a few days, a holiday of sorts. People are rather surprised at how much better I seem, already. An indecently rapid recovery?

But I can barely bring myself to eat. I go to bed only when I’m thoroughly exhausted, so that I cannot lie awake craving his warmth. His touch. All day long there is a fluttering inside my chest, a constant edge of panic I cannot shake off, but which no-one sees.

This morning, in the crowded métro, a couple caught my attention. I saw their embrace out of the corner of my eye, and something inside me twisted, pulled. I couldn’t tear my masochistic eyes away from the woman, the way she looked at her companion, with hunger. I know I looked at him that way too, once. Sometimes, all I wanted was to crawl inside his skin.

Then, when I reached my destination, I saw another woman, elderly, confused. She stood by a rubbish bin, manically tearing up a piece of paper into smaller and smaller pieces, scattering them on the station floor like ragged confetti. Every few seconds she repeated the same two words, in an identical strangled voice, as if a needle were jumping on a record and playing the same disembodied phrase over and over.

“C’était magique.”

It was. It truly was, for a while. But I refuse to believe that it was my one and only shot at magical. Soon, I will renounce living in the past tense, move on.

Soon.

I am subjected to nightmares involving lifts on a disturbingly regular basis.

In last night’s episode, I found myself alone in an unfamiliar lift cabin, when suddenly, without warning, it began to plummet downwards, picking up speed, the air whistling past my ears as the cabin lurched towards the bottom of the shaft. Bracing myself for an imminent impact, back pressed against the wall, I almost wept with relief when inexplicably the cabin ground to a halt, a hair’s breadth away from the bottom, and a woman’s arm appeared through a trap door in the ceiling, beckoning me to safety.

At this point, I awoke and burrowed deep into the sanctuary of Lover’s armpit, heart still racing.

Unsettling experiences involving lifts abound in my mind’s nocturnal meanderings. Cabins which dangle precariously from a single frayed cable, rocking from side to side as I hold my breath and silently pray. Cabins which have no walls, little more than unstable metal platforms, which lurch drunkenly from side to side in cavernously wide shafts as I press myself to the floor, attempting to cling on. Lifts which shoot off in unlikely directions at high speed, or stop at a great distance from the exit door so that I have to jump over a yawning chasm to reach safety.

Bizzarely, in my waking life, I don’t suffer from claustrophobia or vertigo. And taking lifts does not perturb me in the slightest: I should know, I take four of them every single day.

The first is cramped, carpet-lined, and coffin-like and conveys Tadpole and me to the ground floor of our apartment building. I should probably be suspicious of this lift in particular, as I’ve read countless horror stories about the appallingly slack maintenance of lifts in privately owned accommodation in France, and to anyone peering through the lattice work of the lift shaft, it is plain to see that the cables are furry. But, thus far, it has never been out of order for a single day.

The second is in the nanny’s state-owned tower block, which got an honourable mention in a recent post on account of the pervasive odour of urine often to be found inside the cabin.

The third is in the Buttes Chaumont métro station, one of the few Parisian stations which boasts a large capacity lift, on account of how far underground the tunnels run, in the bowels of the earth, beneath a former gypsym quarry. Stairs do exist, but taking them is a fool’s entreprise.

The fourth and final lift which I take every weekday is a modern, marble and mirrored lift which propels my reluctant self to the office every morning.

I have never been trapped in any of the above, nor have I experienced any mishaps while travelling in them, so I can see no logical reason for my brain’s uncanny fixation. But no doubt a psychoanalyst would find interpreting these anxiety dreams childsplay: a powerless petite, watching her life rush past her, spiralling out of control, paralysed by The Fear.

Whatever the reason, what I did not need was for lift n° 1 to utter a deafening groan as it made its descent early this morning, jolting me instantly into a vivid flashback of the previous night’s dream.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” shouted Tadpole, nervously, pupils widening.

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s just a silly noise,” I countered, with artificial joviality, trying not to communicate my disquiet to my daughter, lest we end up having to take the stairs up to the fifth floor on a daily basis if, god forbid, she develops a lift phobia.

Thankfully, the lift arrived at the ground floor without making any further vocal protests, the folding door drawing back to release us only moments later.

“QUICK MUMMY! GET OUT!” shrieked Tadpole, leading me to believe I may not have managed to play it quite as cool as I had hoped.

I stepped out of the lift, on shaking legs, and we went on our way. One down, three to go.

I am thirty three years old, and a mother. The lady in the local boulangerie stopped calling me “Mademoiselle” quite some time ago.

Why is it then that most of the time I feel like I’m only pretending to be a grown up? Putting on a front. Going through the motions of what seems to be expected of someone my age, unsure whether my heart is really in what I’m doing. From the vantage point of childhood, grown ups seemed so different, so complete, so together. The phrase “one day, when you are grown up…” held such tantalising promise.

But here I am, with three decades already behind me, and I’m not quite sure I belong here. Underneath the play acting, there is a girl who often wonders why adulthood doesn’t feel like she thought it would.

I ceased to grow upwards at the ripe old age of eleven, when I watched, in helpless despair, as the other girls in my class at school overtook me. That same year, I became a woman in the childbearing (as a theoretical possibility) sense, prompting my mother’s gift of a rather chaste paperback about love and sex, with a cover photograph of a young man (German porn star moustache) and woman (flicked back Abba fringe) perpetually trapped in the late Seventies, unaware that oral sex existed.

My first physical relationship, at seventeen, was a landmark, but I wouldn’t describe it as a coming of age. I look back fondly at the young girl I was at the time, enthusiastic about the new pastime I had discovered, and fiercely possessive of my boyfriend in the manner of a small child with an exciting new toy.

I took control of my life and finances when I left home for university, aged nineteen, but I wasn’t yet a fully formed person. More a mass of contradictions: obsessed with grades, ferociously competitive, but also a thrill seeker who spared little thought for her own personal safety. It was a time for exploration, for defining my own boundaries away from the constraints of the parental home.

Somewhere in my twenties, I think I started to grow into my own personality. There was the slow, painful realisation of the fact that being top of the class at school does not automatically equip a person for a brilliant future, if that person has no particular ambition in life. Dreams were diluted with a dose of pragmatism; sacrifices were made in order to remain in the country I decided to call my home.

In my first “proper” job, once the elation at finally having money had abated, and I tired of spending every single Saturday afternoon on a spending spree, “adult” concerns started to insinuate themselves into my brain. Peers were buying flats and houses. Suddenly, amassing savings and acquiring property became a major obsession. Panic: was I missing the boat? Saturdays were a whirlwind of estate agent’s, apartment visits and mounting frustration.

Friends began to marry. I wondered whether that was something I wanted, or felt I should want. Practical reasons aside, I found myself incapable of answering this question. Somewhere along the line, I seemed to have mislaid my romantic, girlish fantasy involving a princess dress, possibly because circumstances dictated that I would be footing the bill. Mr Frog and I had moved in together out of sheer pragmatism, not as a result of some conscious decision to take things to another, more serious level.

We dithered, disagreed, and never made it as far as marriage, but the decision to try for a baby was a conscious one, not taken lightly, even though we could not help, once more, but be influenced by our circle of friends, many of whom were embarking on the same adventure at that time.

I suppose I thought that as an adult I would feel more certainty. Know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I wanted certain things out of life. Not just allow myself to be swept along like driftwood, falling into step with everyone else, mixing my metaphors, unsure of my destination.

After all the changes that 2005 wrought on my life (and Tadpole’s, and Mr Frog’s), I have clearer plans for the future than ever before. I dream of moving to the country with my Lover, renovating a house, learning to drive again. The possibility of having another child. I’m almost certain that these are the things my heart desires. But sometimes I am still haunted by the feeling that I am just a child pretending to be a grown up, yearning to play in a Wendy house, with new toys, a new doll.

Cooking lunch for my Lover on Boxing Day, I couldn’t chase away a mental image of my daughter playing with her toy cooker, with its (pink) plastic pans. Watching myself at play, pretending to cook dinner like a grown up; like my own mother.

Does being a grown up just mean playing an extended game of mummies and daddies, with bigger toys, and real genitalia?

I suppose I hoped that the act of leaving Mr Frog would magically transform me into a different, more positive person. There would be no more black cloud days. I would shed my skin, and start afresh.

When I first met Lover, caught up in that heady seratonin rush of excitement and boundless optimism, everything seemed not only possible, but blindingly simple. A bright new future was mapped out as far as my imagination could reach. I saw a wedding. Another child. A renovated ruin in the Breton countryside. A new life, far from the stresses of the capital city, a dream I’ve harboured ever since I became a mother. A chocolate box village school for Tadpole, so much more appealing than the austere maternelle on the avenue Simon Bolivar with its forbidding, barred windows and the sinister plaque which never fails to send a shiver down my spine, recounting how many of their Jewish pupils were deported during the Second World War. Lest we forget.

Everything seemed like childsplay when we hatched our plans under summer skies, walking hand in hand through the Thabor park.

A few months down the line, try as I might, I can’t ignore a growing, gnawing anxiety, a vague sensation of malaise. Is this my natural state of being? As the well-worn cliché goes, you can run, but try as you might, you cannot escape from yourself.

The hairline crack in our plans, I see with the benefit of hindsight, was the timing. I was adamant that I must wait a year or more, for Tadpole and Mr Frog’s sake, before I made any move. Time enough for us all to adjust to the new status quo. Time for wounds to begin to heal. Continuity for Tadpole, who would live in the same flat and spend her days with the same nanny until she was of an age to start school.

Time for the initial euphoria at the newness of our relationship to abate, so Lover and I could look calmly at our plans in the cold light of day and be sure that we were doing the right thing.

So here I now wait, in a limbo of my own making, increasingly aware of a creeping, subtle fear lapping like cool water around my ankles, rising slowly, inexorably up my calves towards my knees.

I lie, half submerged in my bath, eyes defensively closed, and panic. How will I adapt to a new life in the provinces, away from the city which has been my home for ten years? Will I be able to carve out a little niche for myself in rural Brittany? Will a Rennes employer have any use for a high flying bilingual city secretary? If not, what then? How long can I afford to spend looking for a job, before the funds run out? Will we really have enough to live on; to renovate a crumbling barn or farmhouse? Will Tadpole be happy?

What gnaws away at me most persistently is the knowledge of the separation I will inflict on Tadpole and her father. No more mid-week nights spent at daddy’s house. Instead, alternate Friday evenings spent in a TGV train, ferrying Tadpole to Paris, then catching a train straight back again. The same, in reverse, for Mr Frog on Sunday evenings. While I can’t conceive of staying in this city indefinitely against my wishes, purely to give Tadpole and Mr Frog the gift of proximity, I feel criminally selfish for planning to separate them in this way.

I know that I still want all those things my Lover and I talked about last summer. Desperately. Inevitably though, in this limbo of waiting, the hard realities of what I am contemplating are starting to hit home; naïve optimism is giving way to trepidation.

Seven or eight more months remain. I bury my head into the crook of Lover’s neck and close my eyes, breathe deeply. He knows me. He knows that worrying is one of the things I do best.

But I think he is puzzled, and hurt by the fact he is powerless to banish the clouds completely.

Because I never experienced jealousy when I was in a relationship with Mr Frog, I wrongly assumed I had kicked the habit.

Not so. The green eyed monster was only lying dormant; in prolonged hibernation.

I wonder now whether this absence of jealousy wasn’t a warning sign, which should have alerted me to the plain fact that my feelings didn’t run deep enough. I was complacent, secure in my belief that whatever our failings as a couple, he wouldn’t look elsewhere. Despite late nights spent in the office in the company of pneumatic young stagiaires, and nights out on the town with colleagues, to which I was never invited. Which could have been a cause for concern, but only aroused resentment and bitterness that I was trapped at home, while he was out in the real world seeing people and socialising.

Now, for the first time in eight years, I am subject to bouts of totally irrational, corrosive jealousy. I hate myself for even having these feelings. As if wildly unpredictable mood swings weren’t enough for any man to deal with.

It’s not that I don’t trust the man in my life, or the women he is friends with, whether they be old flames or not. On a rational level I know that he is a very moral and proper person. I also know that he is so hopelessly smitten with me that he is willing to overlook all my failings. But this is purely irrational, and no amount of reasoning - with him, or myself - can lay these demons to rest.

Because I’m not jealous of anyone in his present. It’s his past I have a problem with.

Sometimes I find myself wishing I could erase whole swathes of his history. Those dark times when another woman was there to pick him up when he stumbled and fell, to comfort him, to heal him, to put him back together again. Wildly contrasting highs and lows, moments which I fear were more intense than any we may live together.

I know that these things have made him who he is today. Her influence has helped to mould him into the person I fell in love with. And yet, even though I understand this, I want to make these times disappear. To erase them. Overwrite them.

This jealously is a form of masochism. When I’m alone, feeling low, I torture myself. Willingly. Vivid pictures of their shared past swim before my eyes and try as I might, I can’t banish them. Words that he used to describe that period of his life, in emails I received long before we were an item, play over and over inside my head, refusing to be silenced.

I can’t make this stop, so my strategy is to share these feelings with my lover, preventing them from festering quietly below the surface, only to erupt one day and cause irreparable harm.

I can only hope that one fine morning I will wake up and realise these feelings have left me.

I soon arrived at the conclusion that for a working mum, committing “adultery” would be logistically rather complicated.

A typical day consisted of getting Tadpole ready, dashing with her to the nanny’s, leaping into the metro, breezing into work five minutes late and then doing the whole thing in reverse come 6pm. From Tadpole’s bedtime onwards, I was “free”, but trapped inside the flat, unless there was a babysitter on offer. Hence my strong presence online.

But I simply had to take things further after our first meeting and its rather dramatic dénouement. I couldn’t not. I needed to know.

I had never been unfaithful before. I had very black and white ideas of what was right and wrong, and any sort of cloak and dagger behaviour or sneaking around was most definitely wrong in my book. Nor had I experienced a modern electronic courtship, punctuated by rapid fire exchange of text messages and emails. But over the next week the feeling that something momentous was happening intensified with every shred of contact. I had to see him again, and soon, whatever the consequences.

He evidently felt the same as I did, despite his huge reservations about interfering in my life and causing me to lie to my partner. After all, he’d been on the receiving end of this type of behaviour in the past, and described the experience as “wretched”.

I lost five kilos that week. I shook like an alcoholic with the DT’s, adrenalin coursing through me. I barely slept at night. It felt as though guilt was etched indelibly into my face, and I couldn’t quite believe that Mr Frog hadn’t noticed that something was amiss.

Fear and excitement were bound together in such a way that I couldn’t work out where one began and another ended. I caught myself staring at my daughter through hot tears, barely able to grasp the enormity of what I was contemplating and what it would mean for her. My only desire was to curl up in a ball under the bedclothes, shut out the real world and lose myself in the scenes which were playing out across the inside of my eyelids. Making dinner or attempting normal conversation with Mr Frog was hell; an agony of going through the motions, my mind elsewhere. I took evasive action, in the form of long baths or evenings spent cowering behind my monitor; he snoozed in front of the television in the next room, happily oblivious.

When the time came, my alibis were rehearsed and ready. I told my boss that the childminder was sick and left work abruptly. I dashed, heart racing, to a hotel in the Marais. I spent an afternoon there. And an evening. And a morning. In between, I picked up Tadpole and waited for the sitter to arrive; I crept back to our non-marital bed in the small hours.

The very next evening I told Mr Frog I would be leaving him. Because even though I couldn’t be sure what it was or would develop into, this new, very precious thing I had stumbled upon, what I did know was that me and Mr Frog were a thing of the past, and had been burying our heads in the sand for far too long.

I asked my Lover to buy a one-way ticket to Paris, so that I could pretend he was here to stay for good.

I had been cautioned, by many of the people who read petite anglaise and wish me well, that after the desolate lows of last week, I should be aware that spending time with my Lover would no doubt prove to be a palliative therapy, relieving the symptoms and reducing the suffering without curing the root causes. Problems would be forgotten, temporarily, but would not miraculously dissipate.

They were not wrong.

I spent a simply heavenly weekend in his company. The most mundane things, like shopping for food in the supermarket, or fetching a DVD, were blissful. We talked. We strolled around my neighbourhood. We went to bed at unlikely times of day. Happiness was pottering in my flat, knowing he was in the next room making a cup of tea.

Sometimes I almost had to pinch myself to see whether it was all real. I think he felt the same. A couple of months ago all he knew of me was what I had written. Now there he was in my apartment, contemplating the strangely familiar view from my balcony, known to him previously only as the header image at the top of this page.

I was however conscious of the demons lurking just on the periphery of my vision. I would catch sight of them, fleetingly, out of the corner of my eye, and knew they were waiting to pounce in a moment of vulnerability.

From time to time I would wobble dangerously: some trifling thing would bring sudden, unnecessary tears to my eyes and my spirits would plummet. A sensation of falling, similar to that which I get sometimes when hovering between sleep and wakefulness, ‘landing’ on my bed with a sudden jolt. I was torn between attempting to put on a brave face for my Lover, or baring my soul and running the risk of wounding him, making him feel powerless. Because even when he is with me, holding me in his strong arms, and not stranded at the other end of a phone line, there is only so much he can do to help.

I chose honesty. Because that is what we do best. Love might not make me invincible, but as long as I am mindful of this, and know that I do still need to exorcise my demons without his help, we can weather this storm together.

I fell into a hole yesterday.

Not literally, of course.

Despite the fighting talk in my last post, despite the fact that my lover is coming to stay with me for two weeks while Tadpole is away on vacation with mamie et papy, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad. Fragile. Brittle. Exhausted.

I knew it was a temporary bout of depression, and that I wasn’t seeing things clearly, but that didn’t help. I couldn’t find my way out.

Tadpole was adorable. She saw me crying silent tears and came to give me a big hug. She fetched a tissue for my runny nose (I have a summer cold - it is not helping).

“Mummy’s tired. Mummy fait dodo on di bed,” she said, maternally, climbing up onto my bed and motioning for me to join her.

Not that I would actually be allowed to sleep. I’d barely closed my eyes when she screeched “WAKE UP!”, only milimetres from my right ear.

I opened my eyes, pretending to have been woken with a jump, and Tadpole thought this was so hilarious that we had to repeat the exercise at least ten times.

There is nothing worse than finding yourself unable to muster up even the ghost of a smile when you are playing with your child.

In 1995 I would probably have ordered a snakebite and blackcurrant in a damp and dingy cellar nightclub, with a name like “The Swamp” or “Moles”.

This weekend’s drink of choice was a pitcher of Pimms and lemonade, the classiest of which was served in the private gardens of the Royal Crescent Hotel.

I think that sums up nicely how we have changed in ten years.

The “reunion”, which started out as an ambitious plan to reunite a whole host of fellow “eurostuds” (European Studies and Modern Languages graduates), was actually a rather a low-key, intimate affair. So much the better. There were two or three people I really wanted to catch up with properly, and not having to feel obliged to make polite small talk with lots of others meant I could concentrate my attention fully on those who mattered.

Walking around the campus alone on Friday, before everyone else arrived, with 1995 vintage Renaissance on my Ipod, I let my feet guide me to the house where I lived in my first year. The curtains in the window bore the same leafy pattern. The trees in front had grown, and now almost obscured my third floor window. I stood there for a long while, letting memories wash over me.

Going to university, for me, was about becoming a new person. Starting over in a place where no-one had ever known me as a bespectacled, swotty, shy teenager. Leaving behind the heartache of the traumatic split with my first boyfriend, and the friends who had turned out to be more his than mine. It was about re-inventing myself. The exhilaration of living my own life, far from the constraints of the parental home, going out whenever I pleased, spending my (ahem, well, the government’s money) on precisely what I chose, answering to no-one but my own conscience.

I loved my new life, my new friends and the new me wholeheartedly, and spent the happiest years of my life to date in Bath.

Ten years later, in the process of shedding my skin and re-inventing myself all over again, I stand at a crossroads and contemplate a future far from the city of light.

I like to think that ten years from now, I will no longer refer to my time in Bath as the happiest years of my life.

A train carries me in the direction of Paris, away from my lover, at breakneck speed.

There is a plane to be caught the next day, a long-anticipated university reunion to attend in Bath. However, the excitement I felt when I first booked that trip, my elation at the possibility of a weekend where I could slip back ten years and catch a fleeting glimpse of my twenty three year old self, has largely evaporated.

I wish I wasn’t going alone.

I know we will have a fantastic jaunt down memory lane. I also know that I will have to bite my lip so as not to tell anyone who cares to listen with the story of how I met a lovely man two short months ago. A man who fell in love with petite anglaise before he even met me. Nor will I tell them that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I intend to marry him one day.

Every single time I close my eyes, whether it be in a train, a metro, at home in bed, or even, for the briefest second, in front of my monitor at work, I see his face. I taste his skin. Flashbacks to moments of overwhelming intensity cause me to inhale sharply.

Soon after I began writing petite anglaise, the blog was mentioned in the Guardian newsblog. That day I almost skipped around the office. I was unable to share my glee with any of my colleagues, so I hugged my glowing secret to myself.

That is how I feel today. Almost by chance, I have stumbled upon something unbelievably precious, which not many of my nearest and dearest dare to believe in, at this early stage.

I smile a secret smile whenever I think of what we are, and will be.

Paris is rapidly losing what little hold it still had over me.

I spent most of the return train journey dangerously close to tears. Saying goodbye to my lover after another idyllic weekend is becoming more and more of a wrench, even if I was, simultaneously, looking forward to seeing Tadpole after four days away. To add insult to injury, my ‘reserved’ seat had been double booked, meaning that in the absence of any other vacant seats, I had to spend the entire trip sitting on a fold down strapontin in the area between two carriages. There didn’t appear to be any air conditioning - or any oxygen for that matter - and my attempts to read a book were thwarted by my head dipping forwards at regular intervals as I fought a losing battle to stay awake.

I arrived back in the capital late on Sunday afternoon, at my lowest ebb, and began the interminable journey home to collect Tadpole. The métro was humid, and packed with sticky, scantily clad bodies. The connections involved what seemed like hours of trailing along corridors, heaving my bag up and down flights of stairs, and hurrying down moving walkways, all of which were heated to an uncomfortable temperature - which a Delia recipe would probably refer to as a ’slow’ oven. When I emerged from the exit onto my avenue, drained and dehydrated, I was greeted by the choking fug of car exhaust in the cloying, syrupy air and the familiar wail of sirens which form a permanent soundtrack to this city.

As the lift rose to my floor, I felt for keys in my pocket. They were heavier than usual, weighty with the recent addition of keys to my lover’s home. I closed my eyes and imagined that the lift would obligingly deliver me to his front door, instead of here, where only an empty flat awaited me. Devoid now of Mr Frog’s presence, cleared of all his belongings. Strangely though, it doesn’t feel like it is Mr Frog who is missing. Even though my lover has spent only one day and one night here, he has left behind his imprint, like a watermark, in every room.

As I waited for Tadpole and Mr Frog to arrive, and for the kettle to boil, I slid down the wall until I was seated on the soothing, cool tiles of the kitchen floor. The tears finally came.

If home is where the heart is, I mislaid mine in Rennes.

Over the past month my inbox has been groaning under a torrent of messages, from the caring and supportive to the damning and judgemental, with every shade in between. The comments box is only the tip of the iceberg. I have read more well-intentioned advice than I know what to do with.

Everybody sees a situation like mine in a different light, depending on what life has thrown at them; what kind of baggage they have picked up on the way. Sometimes the subject makes people distinctly uncomfortable: one friend I confided in seemed to find it impossible to talk about the breakdown of my relationship with Mr Frog without casting a slightly anxious eye over his own situation, almost squirming in his seat.

When people give me an insight into their own, similar, experiences, I have to tell myself to bear in mind that what worked for someone else, while it often makes interesting reading, can never be wholly relevant to what is happening in my life. Every situation is unique.

I’m not complaining. After all, when someone takes the time to type a long email to a person they have never met, it shows that they care enough to volunteer a point of view, write some kind words, or share their own, sometimes painful, experiences. I am very grateful for this, but endeavour all the same to take whatever is offered with a pinch of salt.

There are those who believe I should have “worked harder” to save my relationship with Mr Frog. Those who caution me against throwing myself headlong into a new relationship so soon, and advocate some time alone first, to adjust to the new status quo. To help Tadpole adjust. Those who are pessimistic, predicting that once the first flush of infatuation wears off, I will realise that I have made a terrible mistake. Those who advise me to keep Tadpole separate from the new adventure I am embarking on, for months, or even years. Those who feel the need to admonish me for having even contemplated leaving Tadpole’s father in the first place to selfishly pursue my own happiness. How dare I put myself first? What kind of a mother am I?

I reserve the right to put my hands over my ears like a child and chant loudly so that I can’t hear any of these words. I reserve the right to listen to my heart, and follow its lead, wherever it may take me.

Am I being selfish? Self-centred? Probably. I feel sure that I am doing what is best for everyone involved, but then I would, wouldn’t I? I wonder whether anyone can ever really be objective about their own motivations? Don’t we all feel tempted to tweak reality to fit in with our long term goals? To persuade ourselves that what we are doing is ultimately for the best?

All I know is this: I love, and I am loved. More deeply, on more levels, than I ever believed possible. I don’t really subscribe to notions like fate, or divine intervention, but I do marvel every day at the fact that I ever crossed paths with this person. I’ve found something, someone I didn’t even know I was waiting for, until now. I want to surrender myself to this feeling, to him, completely.

So don’t ask me to wait. Or take a break, and revisit this a few months down the line. It’s simply not an option for me. For us. I’m no fool, and I will force myself to tread carefully for the sake of my daughter’s well being. She is, and always will be, at the centre of my universe. Mr Frog will remain an important figure in my life too, both for Tadpole’s sake, and because I value him as a friend. But while I’m waiting, impatiently, for the next phase of my life to begin, taking small, measured steps towards it, I reserve the right to hug myself gleefully every time I think of the gorgeous things that my future holds. To laugh to myself in the metro. To smile at my monitor when I receive mail.

No dark cloud can leave a shadow on this.

I had the most wonderful, sensual, exciting, beautiful weekend. I felt so incredibly alive. Awakened. As though until now I had been merely sleepwalking through my life.

Now, back in Paris, back at my desk, nose streaming with a summer cold that manifested itself on the train journey home, I wish I didn’t feel like I simply dreamed it all.

I wish that Mr Frog hadn’t been sick this morning and bombarded me with distressing emails all day. I feel his pain, but I think I am the last person who can help.

It seems that there can be no happiness without guilt and remorse. No pleasure without anguish.

It almost feels like I’m being punished. Divine retribution.

Soon, I will have a bed, but no mattress. Cable TV, without a television set. I am rather pathetically relieved, with hindsight, that the computer is mine, all mine. As is the stereo. And the bookcase.

Oddly, the only item we have almost come to blows about so far is the exercise bike. The exercise bike which I rarely use, and which Mr Frog has never used, not even once. It serves mostly as a rather oversized thermometer and as the guardian of the evil ironing pile (until said pile becomes so large that the clothes topple off). I’m not sure who will wrestle custody of the cursed contraption yet, as Mr Frog changes his mind every other day, but I rather think I’d prefer to see it go. At least then it wouldn’t sit in the corner of my bedroom, eying me balefully and making snide comments about my