My Secret Lover

red-haired quiz mistress who’s labouring
under the illusion that reading out the answers in a strict voice is the same
as knowing them.
     
    ‘I am a genius,’ says Andy, when he’s
totted up his final score.
    ‘Well done.’
    He has only missed two correct
answers, and he claims that I put him off one of them swearing at the television.
     
    ‘What did you get?’ he asks.
    ‘I didn’t bother to add them up,’ I
tell him.
    Really, it’s beneath my intelligence.
    As a group, teachers came out top,
despite Anne Robinson’s best efforts, and I am happy to count myself among
their number.
    I work in the most intelligent
profession in the country.
     
    I am wearing a huge white wedding
dress that takes up most of the back garden. Behind me, my mother is saying,
‘Come on now, you’re going to be late.’
    I’m staring at the flower bed. It’s a
pile of freshly dug earth.
    ‘I planted some sunflowers, but they
haven’t come up,’ I tell her.
    ‘Sunflowers?’ says my mother. ‘For a
wedding?’
    I wake up, seething. Why shouldn’t I
have sunflowers?
    I must make a note in my Wedding Book
(actually an exercise book with the coloured paper letters I cut out and pasted
on spelling Wedding) to ask the florist about the feasibility of having
sunflowers on the tables, or even a sunflower bouquet, although not, obviously,
if I am having the red dress.
    Actually, I could grow them myself.
    Anyway, I doubt that the dream was
really about sunflowers at all.
     
    Andy is snoring so loudly I cannot
get back to sleep.
     
    My mouse glides over:
    No Al Quaeda found. Operation "a
success"
    and clicks on:
    The right lingerie for your wedding
dress
     
    *
     
    Lucky this. I didn’t even know I had
to have special underwear!
    It’s not just bra and panties,
either. There’s a whole language of lingerie I don’t know. Backless basques,
seamfree moulded cups, waspies, thongs with tummy-control panels (can’t
possibly work, can they?}, bottom-lifting briefs. Some of them sound like quite
a good idea even if you’re not getting married.
    And don’t forget hosiery!
    As if.
    Apparently I have to choose between
lace-topped stockings, which I think might slightly ruin the lump-free
silhouette that the seamfree G-string will provide, or hold-ups, which in my
experience don’t. If they’re loose enough to be comfortable, they end up in a
concertina of wrinkles round your ankles, if they’re tight enough to stay,
you’re asking for deep-vein thrombosis.
     
    I’m sure there will be no new
messages in my Inbox. There never are.
    There are 4 new messages in my Inbox!
    I’m sure they’ll all be spam. They
always are.
    There are 4 new messages in my Inbox
and they’re all from Andy 42!
     
    Internet access can be limited for reasons
I will explain when more time. You're the best thing that's happened to me for
ages. Please keep writing! AX
     
    Oh dear! Surely you didn't mean it
about not writing any more. I miss you. AX
     
    I am so sorry. I promise to try to
give you some notice in future if I'm going to be unreachable, would that help?
AX
     
    This may be really out of order, but
I'm wondering if you may be under the illusion that I am in the secret service.
If you want, I will tell you what I really do. Ax
     
    Click on REPLY.
     
    Are you crazy? I'm not giving in when
I've still got 9 questions. Sorry I haven't written recently but I've been so
busy trying to organize my wedding. L
     
    Should show I’m not bothered.
    Almost instantly a new message
appears.
     
    Wedding? Not the kilt, I trust? A
     
    How weird that he’s also up at this
time of night!
     
    As a matter of fact he's a genius.
It's official. L
     
    I suppose I should say
congratulations, but I'm not a big fan of marriage. A
     
    Me neither. I mean the whole
organization thing, obviously. There's a load of people I don't know and don't
particularly like who've somehow become involved: the assistants in the dress
shop, the cake baker, the photographer, the florist and the woman who will give
me false nails with pearls stuck on them which I think look like growths, but are
apparently what everyone is having this year. They've all got these slightly
whiny voices, half cajoling, half patronizing and when I decide on something
wrong — like balloons instead of flowers at the reception — they sort of sigh
and say 'Well, it is Your Big Day,' as if I'm making a terrible mistake
which I will regret for the rest of my life. Probably OK now that I've